Invisible Bodies

Culture is everything that is left as a residue once we have forgotten all the books we've read. In the Romantic era, Prometheus, the Titan god of fire who stole fire from the gods, gave it to humanity and was sentenced to having his liver gobbled up by an eagle every day, represented the lone genius whose efforts to improve human existence could also result in tragedy. For this reason Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein bore the subtitle The Modern Prometheus, an experiment gone wrong. In this novel by Emma Pedreira, one of the heroines is Promethea Stoner, a wealthy woman who is confined to a wheelchair and is feared by the local children. Legends about her abound: that she was abandoned at the altar by a husband who strangled himself to death by tying his bow tie too tight; that she embalmed her parents and put them in a cupboard in the basement of Stoner House. The other heroine is a poor girl, Loretta Count, who is used to deceptions, since custom dictates as a girl she cannot wear trousers, climb trees or give ill-mannered shrimps a beating. She works as a machinist at the local thread and fabric factory, FitzmonguerCorp, where she is harassed by Vulture, one of the foremen. Despite their differing circumstances, Promethea Stoner and Loretta Count (or 'L. C.', as she lets herself be known) find they have something in common: a determination to free themselves from the Victorian constraints in which they live. Emma Pedreira is one of the best-known contemporary writers in the Galician language and the recipient of major literary awards: the Xerais Award for novels, the Novacaixagalicia Award for Poetry, and the Jules Verne Award for young people's literature, which she won with the novel Invisible Bodies.