London Under Snow

London Under Snow is a delicate, compact, mature and profound collection of short stories about winter by Jordi Llavina. Six fragments of different lives in six different moments. In this beautifully written collection, the characters come face to face with their different lives and pasts, all of which are full of ghosts and memories. Sensibility courses through each story, all of them written with a meticulous eye to detail and a careful lyricism that pays tribute to the human condition and the society that we have created.

Bringing winter and Christmas celebrations in a variety of places and cultures to life in a selection of beautifully written short stories, Llavina mixes personal experiences with fictional characters to blur the lines between fiction and reality.

From the Bobsphere Blog, full review HERE

Love, loss, hope and wintertime links all these these stories together. Could this mean that human emotions are like winter, sometimes cold and, yet when sheltered warmness can appear. When one reads these well crafted stories, like a blizzard it’s easy to lose oneself. When an author manages to pack emotional clout in such a minimal way one knows that they are n the hands of a master.

Alice Banks, translator. Full review here

London Under Snow is an absolutely stunning collection, brilliantly rendered into English by Suttle. A book of layers–be those real or imagined–that intertwine to form an incredibly moving and lyrical collection of stories on memory and loss, pitting the real against the imagined.

Winston’s Dad Literary Blog. Full review here

A wonderful intro to a new voice lets hope we get to read some more from this thoughtful writer.

Linda Hepworth, NB Magazine. Full review here

I enjoyed the author’s gentle pacing of his stories, his judicious use of metaphors and his lyrical, eloquent prose. Although a sense of melancholy infuses much of his storytelling, as I’ve just indicated, there are some instances of delicious humour and moments when he gently mocks some of the absurdities of the human condition!

In Under 300 Literary Blog. Full review here

That’s what delighted me most about London Under Snow – Llavina’s ability to guide the narrative towards something completely unexpected. He often teased another avenue, suggesting tales of woe, heartache, or presenting us with further mystery. But it would quickly become clear that nothing could veer him from the path our story was destined to tak

From A Life in Books blog (@alifeinbooks), full review here

Llavina’s stories are all about memory, love and lost youth, often tinged with regret and melancholy. Several are narrated by a writer named Jordi, some with a vein of playful humour running through them … All the stories are set against a wintery background, often at Christmas. Should you know a short story fan keen to branch out a little, the very smartly turned out London Under Snow might make an original if not traditional stocking filler.

Alice Tranah (@alitraloon), full review at Ninja Book Box here

The stories in this book are fragments; glimpses into moments of lives, possibly autobiographical, possibly not, of characters confronting moments from their pasts. They vary in tone from the angry, dark and visceral to the incredibly touching and delicate. The voices of the stories are at one moment unemotional and cold, and the next completely compassionate.

Sam Abrams, Diari Ara

In London Under Snow, Llavina recreates the most delicate and intimate aspects of life with great success.

Anna M. Gil, La Vanguardia

More than logical reason, it is only through emotional communication with the world that we can reach the truth. And, so as to reach this truth, we have at our disposal the written word. This is the Nietzschean idea that permeates the poetry and narrative of Jordi Llavina.

Ramon Pla i Arxé, El Temps

What is really admirable in this text is the truly original, fresh way these stories are told.

Javier Blánquez, El Mundo

London Under Snow is a delicate collection of six short stories with a sole common thread: they are all ghost stories.

Lluís Muntada, El Punt

In Jordi Llavina’s latest collection, London Under Snow, snow – or the threat of snow – is ever present, marking a before and after in the lives of the protagonists.

Josep M. Ripoll, Serra d’Or

The tenuous line separating the author from narrator provides these excellent stories with an ambiguity that makes them ever richer with each read.

Vidal Vidal, Presència

This collection is literature at its most interesting; reflecting the bittersweet poetry of human existence and its conflicts.

Bartomeu Fiol, Diari de Balears

In terms of the quality of its language, the expertise of its writing and the exceptional sensibility of its discourse, London Under Snow will in no way disappoint.

FROM LONDON UNDER SNOW

Five days before I was to set off for the English capital, a colossal snowstorm had set alarm bells ringing and I was worried that the thick blanket of snow shown on the newspapers’ front pages would turn into a terrible layer of ice – I didn’t realise that the services in London actually work reasonably well: snowploughs, workers with reflective jackets and armed with spades and salt all work together to remove the settled snow. On the television, Hyde Park was an indistinct, indivisible white, and all of the hated lead-grey squirrels had sought refuge inside tree trunks or litter bins. The typical phlegmatic British character had been slightly disrupted: the special news reports showed images from Chelsea of playful teenagers building snowmen against the snowy white blanket and keeping bottles of beer cool in the midriffs of their creations. They very sensibly buried the bottles deep into the bodies, patting them down well so that only the bottle necks were showing and making them look like penises. There were occasional acts of vandalism: one person smashed a shop window while others were found fighting in the street – their splattered blood casually imitating some piece of Pollock artwork there on the immaculate canvas. Stupendously smart City workers were seen shouting for taxis that happened to be on strike that day and which were lined up along the road. The file of black cabs, the funerary quality so typical of London taxis, in the middle of a monotone backdrop of absolute white, lent the scene a dreamlike quality, like something out of a Giacomelli photograph. This was three days before my flight and I wasn’t sure if I would be able to go or not. Rather than abating, the storm was getting worse.