Name: When I Sing, Mountains Dance
Rating: 3.642857142857143 (7 reviews)
ISBN: 9781783788255

Irene Sola

A ferociously imaginative, polyphonic debut: amid the rugged beauty of the Pyrenees, the mountains' inhabitants - both human and non-human - bear witness to the tragedies that befall one family

When I Sing, Mountains Dance

Robyn Harley

“I liked his hair first. Then his poems. And then the more I looked at all the other things about him, the more I liked them too. His hands. His legs. His ears. And the wrinkles beside his eyes, like little tails. His shoulders. His voice when he whispered, like a lizard crawling up your back.”

Irene Solà

Near a village high in the Pyrenees, Domènec wanders across a ridge, fancying himself more a poet than a farmer, to “reel off his verses over on this side of the mountain.” He gathers black chanterelles, attends to a troubled cow. And then storm clouds swell, full of electrifying power. Reckless, gleeful, they release their bolts of lightning, one of which strikes Domènec. He dies. The ghosts of seventeenth-century witches gather around him, taking up the chanterelles he’d harvested before going on their merry ways. So begins this novel that is as much about the mountains and the mushrooms as it is about the human dramas that unfold in their midst.

When I Sing, Mountains Dance, winner of the European Union Prize, is a giddy paean to the land in all its interconnectedness, and in it Sola finds a distinct voice for each extraordinary consciousness: the lightning bolts, roe deer, mountains, the ghosts of the civil war, the widow Sió and later her grown children, Hilari and Mia, as well as Mia’s lovers with their long-buried secrets and their hidden pain.

Irene Solà animates the polyphonic world around us, the fierce music of the seasons, as well as the stories we tell to comprehend loss and love on a personal, historical, and even geological scale. Lyrical, elemental, and mythic, hers is a fearlessly imaginative new voice that brilliantly renders both our tragedies and our triumphs.

A Novel

The writing was 0ften so beautiful, and I keep thinking about those precious chapters told from the eyes of animals & nature - young deer, dogs, lightning - those were so special. Unfortunately I could not get a sense of story and people very well, which is what I think gets lost when a novel switches to new perspectives at every turn, without looking back. 

gabrielle v

The writing was 0ften so beautiful, and I keep thinking about those precious chapters told from the eyes of animals & nature - young deer, dogs, lightning - those were so special. Unfortunately I could not get a sense of story and people very well, which is what I think gets lost when a novel switches to new perspectives at every turn, without looking back. (less)

Very confusing until the last 2 chapters, the story it’s self was surprising and unique! I loved the characters and the strange side stories. Everything felt so surreal, I just don’t think it was my cup of tea unfortunately:( 🙃

When I Sing, Mountains Dance

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