[Página 42] Mr Salary - Sally Rooney

Nathan took me Christmas shopping in the afternoon before the hospital visit. I buttoned up my coat and wore a large fur hat so as to appear mysterious through shop windows. My most recent boyfriend, whom I’d met at grad school in Boston, had called me ‘frigid’, but added that he ‘didn’t mean it in a sexual way’. Sexually I’m very warm and generous, I told my friends. It’s just the other stuff where the frigidity comes through.

They laughed, but at what? It was my joke, so I couldn’t ask them.

Nathan’s physical closeness had a sedative effect on me, and as we moved from shop to shop, time skimmed past us like an ice skater. I had never had occasion to visit a cancer patient before. Nathan’s mother had been treated for breast cancer sometime in the 1990s, but I was too young to remember that. She was healthy now and played a lot of golf. Whenever I saw her, she told me I was the apple of her son’s eye, in those exact words. She had fastened on to this phrase, probably because it so lacked any sinister connotation. It would have been equally applicable to me if I had been Nathan’s girlfriend or his daughter. I thought I could place myself pretty firmly on the girlfriend-to-daughter spectrum, but I had once overheard Nathan referring to me as his niece, a degree of removal I resented.

We went for lunch on Suffolk Street and put all our luxurious paper gift bags under the table. He let me order sparkling wine and the most expensive main course they had.

Would you grieve if I died? I asked him.

[Reseña] Mr Salary - Sally Rooney

Título: Mr Salary 

Autor: Sally Rooney 

Páginas: 48

Título original: Mr Salary 

Editorial:  Faber Stories 

My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all. Years ago, Sukie moved in with Nathan because her mother was dead and her father was difficult, and she had nowhere else to go. Now they are on the brink of the inevitable. Sally Rooney is one of the most acclaimed young talents of recent years. With her minute attention to the power dynamics in everyday speech, she builds up sexual tension and throws a deceptively low-key glance at love and death.

A pesar de su corta longitud, Mr Salary es una historia que encierra muchísimos sentimientos. 

En sus páginas, Sukie, la protagonista, nos contará una pequeña parte de su vida. 

Un viaje a Boston para ver a su padre enfermo.

Y es que por simple que parezca, la autora ahonda muy bien en la relación entre nuestra protagonista y Nathan, su “hermanastro” “tio” ¿algo? Es un relación como la vida misma, dificil de explicar. 

Una joven de 22 años, un hombre de 38, una relación familiar previa, un piso compartido, y las emociones ahí, perennes. 

-‘My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all.’-

No es una historia de amor, no es un drama al uso, en cierto modo es un reflejo de la vida.

Alguien que se enamora y alguien que aunque no lo esté, no quiere despedirse de ese cariño y la tranquilidad de compartir algo con alguien. Todo esto, marcado con pinceladas de enfermedad y muerte.

A pesar de ello siento que no puedo expresar realmente la sensación de congoja que me tiene el pecho aprisionado ahora mismo, y tampoco quiero dar detalles de la historia. 

Si tu también sientes curiosidad, y quieres leer una historia en lo que se te hace el café, te recomiendo darle una oportunidad a Mr.Salary. 

Puedes leerla totalmente gratis en GRANTA

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