In literature, a kiss lasts a whole life
A los setenta y un años, la escritora española Clara Sánchez publica Lo inexplicable, una novela que convierte la reencarnación y el tiempo en territorios literarios donde la muerte pierde su drama y los amores inconclusos encuentran, al fin, su duración. Con dos voces —una niñera desconcertada y un adolescente muerto que no comprende su destino—, Sánchez continúa su larga exploración de aquello que la existencia deja sin resolver, encontrando en la ficción el único lugar donde un beso puede durar toda una vida.
- El tiempo, ese concepto que ni Newton ni Einstein lograron domesticar, es el verdadero antagonista de la novela: Sánchez lo enfrenta como una batalla literaria personal.
- Un bebé con características adultas y una fijación inexplicable por una calle de Madrid genera una inquietud que la autora distingue con cuidado del género fantástico convencional.
- Hugo, el adolescente muerto que narra desde un lugar desconocido, encarna la desorientación de quien no comprende su propio fin, una 'casi-alma' suspendida entre mundos.
- La tensión entre maternidad y aspiraciones femeninas atraviesa la novela como una corriente subterránea: Sánchez señala que la biología y la sociedad han conspirado históricamente contra los sueños de las mujeres.
- La resolución que propone el libro no es sobrenatural sino filosófica: la reencarnación como idea que 'relaja' porque devuelve al tiempo su amplitud y le quita al morir su carácter definitivo.
Clara Sánchez llega a Lo inexplicable con setenta y un años, dieciséis novelas y una trayectoria que incluye el Premio Alfaguara y el Premio Nadal. El libro, publicado primero en Italia —país donde la autora encontró su mayor reconocimiento con Lo que esconde tu nombre—, se presenta ahora en España con la confesión de que aquí, ante el público propio, la escritora siente más nervios.
La novela nace de una obsesión filosófica: el tiempo. No el tiempo biológico que envejece los cuerpos, sino el tiempo como concepto irreductible, el mismo que fascinó a Newton y a Einstein sin que ninguno lograra atraparlo del todo. Esa inquietud condujo a Sánchez hacia la reencarnación, una idea que no le resulta macabra sino reconfortante, capaz de despojar a la muerte de su peso dramático. La estructura narrativa responde a esa dualidad: Alicia, una joven opositora que trabaja como niñera, cuida a un bebé de menos de un año que exhibe una conciencia perturbadoramente adulta y una fijación misteriosa con una dirección en el Madrid más acomodado. Al otro lado de la historia habla Hugo, un adolescente muerto que intenta comprender qué le ha ocurrido desde un lugar indefinido, una suerte de 'casi-alma' que Sánchez vincula a la tradición de Luis Vives y a los narradores observadores de Fitzgerald y Henry James.
La maternidad ocupa un lugar central en su reflexión. Sánchez fue madre a los veintisiete años y ahora es abuela, y ese desplazamiento de perspectiva le permitió ver con claridad lo que antes solo intuía: que los primeros años de un niño encierran algo casi sobrenatural, y que la presión que recae sobre las madres ha sofocado históricamente las aspiraciones de las mujeres. Su propia madre lo decía sin rodeos. La autora lo convierte en diagnóstico: hay muchos estímulos y pocas oportunidades reales, una precariedad que va más allá de la crianza.
Alrededor de los dos misterios centrales —qué le pasó a Hugo, qué habita en ese bebé— Sánchez teje varias historias de amor: un matrimonio en crisis, un romance adolescente que no llega a consumarse, una conexión que emerge lentamente. Son los amores que más le interesan: los latentes, los inconclusos, los que la vida dejó sin terminar. La literatura, dice, es el único lugar donde esas escenas pueden revisitarse con calma, donde un beso puede durar toda una vida. Frente a un mundo que aplasta, la ficción se convierte en el territorio donde la realidad, por fin, obedece.
Clara Sánchez, seventy-one and a member of Spain's Royal Academy of Language, has spent decades writing novels that circle around what we cannot quite grasp. Her latest book, Lo inexplicable, arrives in Spanish bookstores after its initial publication in Italy—a pattern that has become familiar since her breakthrough success there with Lo que esconde tu nombre. She publishes sixteen works of fiction to her name, a Alfaguara Prize in 2000, a Nadal Prize in 2010. But standing in front of journalists to discuss this new novel, she admits to a particular nervousness. "Here I get more anxious," she said.
The novel is, as she frames it, a literary battle against time—not the biological kind, not the ticking of years, but something deeper. Time as a concept that fascinates and unsettles her, something that even Newton and Einstein never quite managed to pin down. This preoccupation led her naturally to reincarnation, an idea she finds not morbid but oddly comforting. "It's a wonderful idea that relaxes me, because it takes the drama out of death and time itself," she explained. The novel explores this territory through two narrators whose voices pull the reader in opposite directions.
Alicia is a young woman preparing for civil service exams who works as a nanny for an infant not yet a year old. The child displays something unsettling—adult characteristics, an inexplicable fixation on a house on Madrid's Velázquez Street. The second voice belongs to Hugo, an adolescent who is dead and struggling to understand what has happened to him. "It's not a ghost story," Sánchez clarified. "I wanted to capture anxieties through a consciousness. Hugo speaks from an unknown place, a kind of 'almost-soul,' as Luis Vives might say." The novel draws on literary precedents she admires: the observing narrator of The Great Gatsby, the ambiguous supernatural dread of The Turn of the Screw. Sánchez has always been drawn to characters who slip into worlds not their own, who watch from the margins rather than participate.
She remembers herself as that kind of observer—at parties, the one who looked on rather than danced. Motherhood changed that calculus. She became a mother at twenty-seven, and now she is a grandmother, a vantage point that proved essential to writing this book. "As a mother I felt enormous pressure," she said. "Now I get to savor the growth." The transformations a child undergoes in the first three years are, she believes, almost supernatural—the way infants train themselves like soldiers, only to lose that memory entirely. "The biology is sexist," she remarked. "Children should be had at sixty."
This tension between motherhood and selfhood runs through her thinking about women more broadly. She recognized it early in her own mother, who would look at her children and say, "What a burden!" Women are not naturally inclined to spend their lives changing diapers, Sánchez observed. They have dreams, aspirations. Yet the world has not made room for both. "There are many stimuli and few real opportunities, great precariousness," she said, naming a problem that extends far beyond motherhood into the texture of contemporary life.
Lo inexplicable is built around two central mysteries: what happened to Hugo, and what is happening to that infant who seems possessed by some strange force. Around these questions, Sánchez has woven several love stories—a marriage in crisis, an adolescent romance that never reaches its conclusion, a connection that emerges through the investigation the novel contains. She has a particular fondness for loves that remain latent, that never fully arrive. "Incomplete situations and scenes that don't conclude—that's what interests me most," she said. Life is full of such moments, moments that feel unfinished. In literature, she has found a way to complete them. "You have all the time in the world to revisit those incomplete scenes," she explained. "It's the terrain of serenity that lets me fight against a world that feels like it's crushing me. Literature lets reality become your toy. There, a kiss lasts a whole life."
Notable Quotes
It's a wonderful idea that relaxes me, because it takes the drama out of death and time itself.— Clara Sánchez, on reincarnation
The transformations a child undergoes in the first three years are almost supernatural—they train themselves like soldiers, only to lose that memory entirely.— Clara Sánchez, on infant development
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
You describe this novel as a battle against time, but you say it has nothing to do with age. What do you mean by that?
Time as a concept, not as a clock. What determines us, what we can't quite understand. Newton couldn't grasp it, Einstein couldn't either. That mystery is what fascinates me—the idea that we're living inside something we can't fully comprehend.
And reincarnation became your way into that mystery?
Yes. It's a way of thinking about time that doesn't terrify me. It desdramatizes death. If we come back, if we return, then time isn't a line that ends—it's something circular, something that gives us another chance.
The novel has two narrators. Why did you need both voices?
One is alive and observing—Alicia, the nanny. The other is dead and confused—Hugo. They're both trying to understand something they can't quite name. One is looking in, one is looking out. Together they create the full picture of what's inexplicable.
You mention being an observer yourself, someone who watched rather than participated. Does that come through in how you write?
Absolutely. I've always been drawn to characters on the margins, people who see things others miss. But motherhood pulled me out of that role. I had to be present, not just watching. Now, as a grandmother, I can observe again—but differently. With more tenderness.
You said children should be had at sixty. You're not serious.
Only partly joking. At sixty, you have perspective. You're not drowning in the pressure of building a life. You can actually savor what's happening instead of surviving it. Women especially—we're told we want motherhood, but we also want everything else. The world hasn't figured out how to let us have both.