Irene Solà: On Abject Women, Writing from Curiosity, Memory and Oblivion, and Her New Book ‘I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness’

A few years ago, I picked up Irene Solà’s When I Sing, Mountains Dance, translated from Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem, intrigued by the title and the cover. I didn’t know what to expect, but I definitely didn’t expect what I got—a polyphonic, sprawling story that has all the weirdness and charm of a fable narrated by humans, mushrooms, clouds, ghosts, and more. It felt like a singular book: completely unlike anything I’d read before. This year, I couldn’t wait to read Solà’s new novel I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness (Graywolf Press, 2025).

I Gave You Eyes, also translated by Lethem, is the story of a lineage of women who haunt a house in the present. It travels through four centuries of family memory and collective history, to tell a story full of curses, devils, myth and memory. The story unfolds non-linearly, revealing bits of information as it goes, making me go aha! every time I recognized a connection. Atmospheric, playful, and deeply visceral, I Gave You Eyes is an unflinching look at desire and freedom and violence, and what we can see when we’re brave enough to not look away. 

I spoke with Solà over a series of voice notes we sent back and forth, about collapsing time in her novel, subjectivity, writing as a process of learning, and what gets left out of history books. 

Nirica Srinivasan: One of my favorite kinds of stories is a haunted house story, and I Gave You Eyes is such an interesting version of that—a house haunted by its women across generations. I love the way you collapse the boundaries of time and death. What drew you to write about a house and a lineage of women in this way? 

Irene Solà: I also love a haunted house story, and I was thinking a lot about houses when I started writing this novel. I was trying somehow to imagine everything that might have happened inside the house—everything that the house knows, everything that a house might have heard and seen—everything significant, but also insignificant. I was trying to imagine them all together, all at the same time, like you said, collapsing. 

A topic that I often explore in my books is perspective, which is very much related to subjectivity—to the fact that we all perceive, feel, understand, and then explain the world from our own personal view and experience. What I am doing in this book is telling us a family story, but I’m doing so from very diverse subjectivities in order to try and reflect on the fact that there is no objective family history, just as there is no objective ‘history’ with a capital ‘H.’ But rather that family stories and histories come to us in a quite fragmentary way, from different points of views, sometimes even from contradictory views, with different biases, opinions, intentions, perceptions. And through our life we kind of piece them together. Something that your mom might tell you at some point, something that your grandma will say some day, something that your uncle will explain on another occasion, something that many years after your mom will tell you again, but slightly different. Something that at some point you will realize no one actually ever explained to you. You will piece all this together and try to construct your perspective or your narrative of your family history. 

I realized that this book was very deeply interested in memory, but in being interested in memory, it was also interested in oblivion—in the fact that we remember, and that we also forget. And that when we remember, when we rescue and narrate memory, we decide, voluntarily or not, what we preserve and what we forget, individually but also collectively.

And I think that this is the reason why this is a ghost story, because the ghost is a figure classically related to memory and to remembrance. At some point while writing, I realized that the narrative voice, the perspective, was [on] the other side. The point of view of this book was next to or with this group of women, who lived but also died in this house and then continued inhabiting it. And that is also why each character or ghost in this novel has a very different relationship to memory. Some want to establish themselves as chroniclers and dominate the family history, and even erase other voices or perspectives. 

This is not a historical novel. It has no intention of being one. It is a novel that is located in the present day, that has a contemporary and critical and feminist intent. And while it walks back through more than four centuries of history, it does so with mechanisms of the fable, of the legend, of the tale. But the novel draws a reflection on how history has been constructed. It keeps asking questions in regards to who wrote [history], who decided what was important and what was not, what was worth transmitting and preserving and what was not, who is part of it and who has been excluded. And precisely for this reason, the protagonists of the book are those who, in their context, are not generally the protagonists of ‘History’ with capital letters, nor generally the protagonists of most stories, tales, and legends. They’re women—and not only women, but old women, and not just old women, but supposedly ugly women, abject women, women outside the canon, dead women. And this allows me to explore themes such as freedom and sexuality and the body and violence and motherhood or the construction of romantic love. But moreover, it allows me to reflect on how female characters have been treated and represented in both historical and fictional contexts. 

NS: I had the urge to draw a family tree while reading this, which I took great joy in doing!

IS: And I take great joy in that—I think it’s so beautiful! This happens quite often, that readers tell me that they’ve been drawing the family tree while reading the book. And I love it, because to me it also connects with everything I’ve been telling you—about subjectivity and how we all understand and perceive the world in a different way, and how family histories come to us in a fragmentary way. I could have drawn a family tree and put it in the book—I actually love books that have family trees. But at some point I realized that I couldn’t do that because somehow it would have been like giving you the objective truth of this family. Like, this is how it is, this is the family tree. And giving this to the reader at the very beginning would have been contradictory to a lot of the ideas that I was working with in this novel. 

And I think it’s so powerful, and so connected to all the themes in the book, how each reader draws their own tree, with different paper and pens and in their own handwriting, and how the more they read, the more they understand, and the more they’re able to actually draw the family tree. 

NS: A lot of reading and research went into this book—you acknowledge a number of sources of folktales and histories, and even cookbooks. What is your process of research like for writing a novel like this? 

IS: To me, writing has a lot to do with curiosity and learning, and asking questions aloud and asking questions to myself. I studied fine arts, so I have the feeling that when working, I use contemporary art methodologies, or I use what I learned in an art studio. This has a lot to do with how I relate to and approach and live in the process. How, to me, the process is as important or even more important than the end result. 

My research process is vast and transdisciplinary. So I accumulate hundreds of images in visual searches around the subjects, the context, and the characters I am working on. But I also watch endless hours of YouTube videos. I go and meet people from very diverse backgrounds and very different interests, people who might be experts in certain things that I’m very interested in. I also immerse myself in libraries and read as much as possible, and immerse myself in archives. What I really try to do is I try to listen to the project and to let it take the shape that it needs. So for me, freedom, exploration, and experimentation are key factors of my writing, and of my research process and investigation. 

And so there are always surprising things to investigate and to be interested in. To be curious about something only brings more interest and more curiosity and more surprises. 

NS: I love the idea of the process being as or more important than the result. Are there any other ways in which your fine arts training impacts how you write? Does that come into play when you start writing a novel? 

IS: I think it does. Maybe we should talk about what it is exactly to start writing a novel? Because I realize that for me, starting to write a novel means the very beginning of starting to think about the novel and start to take notes or read—the very initial research. For me, that is already writing a novel.

At the start of this process, I never know which novel I am going to write. I don’t know how the book is going to start or how the book is going to end, or every character or scene that’s going to be in it. What I try to understand when I’m working on a new project is, what am I interested in? What am I very honestly and very deeply interested in? What ideas, what thoughts, what themes, what reflections do I want to be thinking about and exploring for the coming months and years? And then once I understand what I am working on, and the more I research and think about these themes, the more that I am able to understand how the book, how its characters, how its stories are going to help me keep thinking and keep reflecting and keep asking questions.

In my work and in my process, there is always a big amount of curiosity that has to be there. For me, writing is a learning process, and I learn about writing, but not only about writing—I learn about a lot of things, about everything I’m interested in. There is also a big amount of intuition and instinct going on there. Freedom is very important. Also a certain amount of boldness, and the idea of allowing the project to surprise me. It’s very important to deeply listen to the project in order to be able to give it the shape that it needs. And I think I learned to work this way while I was studying fine arts. 

NS: Something I love in your writing is that it’s very evocative and very vivid—you don’t shy away from the visceral, and your writing is full of unexpected metaphors: the kitchen window is “narrow and deep like an ear canal,” the sun rays “lick the facade” of the house. There’s such an emphasis on the sensory and a kind of earthiness. How do you think of the senses as you write?

IS: This is a very interesting question. I think that I understand writing as something very intellectual, something that allows me to think, to research, to ask questions, something that has to do with curiosity and something that is very mental. But at the same time, I understand writing as something visceral, as something that has to do with the stomach and something that has to do with your intuition, with instinct, with perception, with emotions and sensations. And to me it’s very interesting how connecting these two [ideas] brings you even farther. 

For this book I was thinking a lot about the body. I wanted the body to have a strong presence and protagonism in the book—the body and carnality, but understood in a very broad sense, so that of people and that of animals, but also the body of the landscape, the food, the body of the house, the materials with which the house is made. I was interested in describing everything that bodies do and everything that bodies can feel. So there are lots of descriptions of the torture of bodies, a lot of deaths, but also a lot of pleasure and what pleasures the body can feel. That’s also why there is an importance of colors, and textures, and smells. It was interesting or important to me to be sensorial and carnal and material, in every possible sense, in this novel.

NS: Each section of your book has an epigraph, and they come from such a variety of places—Hungarian poet Anna T. Szabó, Pedro Páramo, Virginia Woolf, Ali Smith! How did you collect and choose those?

IS: Each of these epigraphs speaks to the ideas explored in their chapter. For me, the process of writing involves a lot of reading, and these epigraphs, these books, these authors, were speaking to me deeply when I was writing the book. They felt very present. Writing is like having an ongoing conversation, with yourself, but also with all the books out there, with literary traditions and with deep artistic endeavors of writers and artists.

That’s why I chose them, or how I chose them. They are from different languages. They come from very different kinds of books, from different ages even. But at the same time, it felt very organic to choose them, or to realize that they made sense there at the very beginning of each chapter. It came naturally, realizing, okay, this has to be the opening of this chapter. Like, yes, this is its place. 

NS: I love that idea of epigraphs speaking across time—it fits into those overarching themes of time collapsing in your book.

I wanted to ask where you find inspiration. Where do your ideas come from—is it from an everyday practice of noticing? Is it from other art that you encounter? Do you have any advice about how it is that we can find and foster that feeling of inspiration?

IS: Maybe we could try to pin down what is inspiration, or what do we mean when we talk about inspiration. Maybe inspiration is that almost electric, sparkly, warmish feeling that you get—sometimes in your stomach, sometimes on your neck, sometimes under your arms, when you’re very connected and excited and deeply engaged with something—[laughs] I’m not even sure if that’s a word in English, but like from the stomach or from your spinal cord. 

And you can find this in different places. This feeling can happen because of everyday things, the everyday practice of noticing like you were saying—I like that phrase. I do try to be present and to notice what’s happening around me, to look and to see the things happening around me and to listen to what people are telling me, or to the sounds and stories around me. 

But I think that inspiration also can come from a methodology of work. It can come from sitting down at your desk and working on something that you’re interested in and committed to, and to do so every day. And obviously it can come from work that other people have done. For me, it’s important to read, and to read a lot, and to read things that I have the feeling that will help me with whatever I’m working on, that will help me think deeper. 

Reading for me has to do with research, but also with the pleasure of reading. Art and contemporary art and cinema are also very important in order to feed me. Also music. So yeah, I actually try to [light] those sparks of inspiration with anything at hand. 

NS: I love the titles of both the books that I’ve read of yours, and it was so exciting when the title showed up in the book itself. How do you approach titling your work, where did this title come from?

IS: I think I approach titling my books in a similar way to everything else in the sense that I try to listen to the book and to the project. I try to find the book in a very honest and organic way. For most of the writing of this book, I did not have the title. I tried not to force it, just to wait. And once I deeply understand the book, I will know what title this book needs, but not before that. 

The title of this book is taken from the book itself. There is this character Margarida, who at one point is arrested and she experiences, in a sort of a delirium, her way to prison in Barcelona as if it was a descent into hell. She imagines how God abandons her and how he admonishes her, and this phrase is one of the things he supposedly tells her. I chose this sentence for the title because somehow it was a synthesis which mirrors some of the ideas in the book. 

For me, this phrase is closely related to free will. So this sentence, which at first might seem like a reproach, like something that an angry parent could say to his child—and in this case it’s literally from the mouth of God, the father—what this phrase is saying is something like, I gave you life. I gave you eyes, I gave you a moral code, I gave you values, and I was expecting a whole series of things from you. And clearly you have not fulfilled my expectations. You have subverted them, you have rebelled, you have gone where you wanted. And therefore you have come out of the way that I had in mind for you. There is also a preconception in this sentence that you have made a bad choice—that you have made a mistake, that your eyes are not made to look into the dark; how absurd to have received eyes and to have looked at something that you cannot see properly. There is even the preconception that darkness is a bad thing. But actually the whole work is a reflection, among many other reflections, about the fact that we should think twice in regards to the assumption that darkness is a bad thing. Because, at least in the book, darkness becomes a space of possibilities, of refuge, of life, of freedom, of pleasure.

The title also reflects the place from which I have written this book, the freedom from which I have written this book—because in writing, I have looked at the darkness, meaning that I have looked at whatever I chose to look at; I have worked on whatever I wanted to work at that moment. I have looked at what was unknown to me, at what I had yet to discover and understand. And that’s what I was interested in—what interested me and no one else but me.

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Irene Solà is the author of the novels The Dams, When I Sing, Mountains Dance and I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Towards Darkness, and the poetry collection Beast.