2023-11-11 12:50:45
the writer Alba Dalmau (Cardedeu, 1987) has published ‘Ho Ho Ho’ (Universe), a Christmas book that narrates the life of a young man who seeks to make peace with his past and which ends in an unusual Santa Claus academy. Although it is a novel with a background clearly related to this party, Dalmau warns that it does not approach it through “the clichés that the reader expects”. In this sense, he considers that he takes the story “to the limit”, since Nadal “is becoming something extremely comical”. All of this is complemented by a dossier with all kinds of objective information that ends up merging directly with the protagonist’s story.
The plot focuses on the character of Lluc – a boy of humble origin – whose life is plunged into a tragedy that marks his youth and the entry into adult life. From that moment, his day-to-day life passes without a very clear horizon and in a permanent escape until chance takes him to a Santa Claus academy.
In an interview with ACN, Dalmau explains that it is a “real” center that he discovered through the documentary ‘Becoming Santa’ published in 2011. “It is a non-profit academy located in Michigan and which produces a hundred graduates every year. There, attendees learn to apply make-up, answer eloquent questions from children or say Santa’s legendary phrase,” he points out.
The discovery of this reality allowed the writer to weave the plot of her latest novel, as it seemed to her a good way to reinforce the more “comic” part of the party. “It’s not cold, the children have lost their innocence, the nougats are getting weirder and the gifts are getting to the shops sooner,” he says, “the Santa Claus academy reinforces that.”
Among the references that inspired him, Dalmau cites two very specific ones: the story of ‘L’Auggie Wren’ by Paul Auster and ‘Cathedral’ by Raymond Carver. “They have in common the theme of blindness, since there is a blind character. But the true blind is not the physical, but the emotional blindness of our time,” he says.
A book for curious people
While ‘Ho, Ho, Ho’ is based on a very clear literary and narrative story, it also incorporates a series of notes about Father Christmas and Christmas. These come from a very extensive documentation that the writer did for a whole year to realize that when talking about this party “not as much is known as is believed”. “If a person is curious, the book will interest them because it addresses topics such as the type of Santa’s beard, the meaning of the baubles on the tree or the history of the reindeer,” he underlines.
Annotations that are also integrated at a certain moment with Lluc’s plot, according to Dalmau, a character “a bit of a loser” for whom everything “goes wrong” following an event that generates a feeling of guilt that it will haunt him for the rest of his life. “In each chapter he tries it, but in the end what the novel means is that things are not always as one thinks and that if there is a lack of communication, you can’t know what the other person is thinking either” , add.
Live Christmas with enthusiasm
Dalmau says that writing about Christmas has been an “interesting challenge”, since it was – precisely – a very “topical” topic. “I would be curious to see how any writer I like gets out of it, to see what he can tell again,” he admits. On the other hand, the author explains that it is a party she lives “with desire”.
Finally, assessing its evolution in recent years, the author believes that in her case it has evolved from a more complicated writing to a simpler one. “The challenge is to write in a direct, clean and simple way”, he points out, “every time I’m less ashamed to leave the text bare”.
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