Concept of the Day: Grapes (+ Book)

I was hoping for a sudden gust of inspiration, but it never came.

I was hoping to speak about a book that drove my senses wild and took five years of emotional baggage off my back (snap) just like that… But I found that I’m not all that good at reviewing books without sounding like a cheap commercial.

I was hoping to share the newfound thrill that this book created on my spine, but I realised that I don’t know how to thrill readers while using someone else’s images. What could I speak about, when talking about this book? What was the real deal? The thing that made me jump inside my own skin and stare at the ceiling, sleepless in the small hours of the night, relieving the best scenes, with my own little self in lieu of the protagonist?

Maybe it was the tropical heat and the brunt caramel of the author’s words, so well chosen, to talk about forbidden passions and restricted freedoms.

Maybe it was the dream… The dream scene with a twelve year old girl staring at the snow falling outside the window, eating grapes from a bunch on her lap, one by one. Every time she ate one grape, another one grew in the same place where the first one had been, in such a way that eternity would pass and the girl would still be eating grapes. Then the same dream appears, but no longer in an atmosphere of hopeful longing and mordant desire, but in one of despair and loss. This time, the girl eats grapes fast, in twos and threes, and the new ones have no time to grow back, so the bunch will be finished quickly, and the snow will stop forever.

Or maybe it was the way she painted her face black and spoke in african languages and danced to the drums with a devilish grace.

I’m pretty sure the grapes did the trick. They carry such delicious symbolism. The work UVA comes from the same word as moist (húmedo, humedecer). Meanwhile, in English, GRAPE comes from a term meaning hook, an image closer to the one we get from the title “The Grapes of Wrath”, which makes reference to the twisted vines the grapes are born from. Since the novel was written in Spanish, I will stick to the moist significance of a decadent fruit, slowly opening due to the pressure of teeth and tongue.

Grapes are often linked to erotism and the wild (feral) nature of things.

The book I speak of is Of Love and Other Demons, by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez, and his prose in this particular work oozes out of his thoughts just like wine. Even though the purpose of this post is not mainly to review or recommend, I’d advise you to leaf through this piece of art, even if just for curiosity. You will not be dissapointed.

---

The Grapes belong to Pexels in Pixabay