I, CARMELA by Clara Villanueva.

What if you spend the summer in a New Age centre next to a Cathar castle in the French countryside? This is what Carmela does. She takes a job as a cleaner in exchange for the opportunity to practice French in order to enter the University. This is her output to a life of disappointment in love in which men have been the cause of all evils and rice dishes cooked by her mother the remedy for them. From the very beginning she will encounter problems due to the clash of cultures: “Thinking about my mother’s sandwiches the realisation came over me that I really was in a foreign land. France was only on the other side of the Pyrenees but it always felt like another planet. All those centuries of liberty and equality and they were incapable of feeding a hungry person. So much for their fraternity”. But she would solve them in a witty way. It's 1985, Carmela is 25 and is fed up with men. In this adventure she is surrounded by unique characters like a French aristocrat, her lesbian stepdaughter, a nymphomaniac room mate, a pseudo Celtic princess, an aspiring Buddhist monk or even a medieval ghost. But because of his rejection of men she feels particularly uncomfortable with Jack, the vegetarian English cook, or a nerd with a lovely bum, as he is called. They get involved in hilarious situations due to the original courses and workshops clients attend to in this New Age Centre dealing from Nice Astrology, to Instinctotherapy, passing through Scred Dances or The Feminine Miracle on Earth. Many other characters appears on the novel, and as they show off they bring with them memories of past love affairs with Ernesto the hippie, Aziz the Moroccan, Fabio the Italian, Arnaud the French and El Curro the flamenco musician, that seem to haunt her. Nonetheless, it will not be the same with Jack. To Carmela living as a couple is a form of self destruction. You stop looking at yourself through your own eyes and start to see yourself as the other sees you. Sometimes it’s flattering. Other times is very destructive. I don’t want it to happen me again. I refuse to have another relationship with a man. But, can you control your feelings and emotions to that point of certitude? Carmela will have to face an argument between her convictions and her feelings, what she things she wants against what she wishes. Will she make the right choice?

                                                       Title:            I, Carmela

                                                       Author:        Clara Villanueva

                                                       Publisher:     Mimbelle Books

                                                       Edition:        Paperback

                                                       Price:          11.99€

Read the first chapter/Lee el primer capítulo: http://www.mimbellebooks.com/