LOS ASTRONAUTAS

In this book, Laura Ferrero shares a moving account of a family that never was, that disintegrated almost before she existed, and which left its mark on all three family members forever.

I had a family, but nobody ever told me about it. On December 26, 2018, I came into possession of a wayward photo of my mother, my father, and myself. When I saw it, it was the first time I used those two words together: my family. And that was also when this novel began. When I was a girl, I ping-ponged between divorced parents and their families. From those confusing years, there is a surviving doodle of my father dressed as an astronaut, and across the drawing I had scrawled the word NASA in enormous letters. Why had I chosen to make my father an astronaut in an enormous spacesuit, even though he worked at a bank? On December 26, 2018, I decided to start writing a novel, a novel about my family. I got the notebooks and the recorder and sat down across from the protagonists - my father, my mother, and their respective partners - to ask a very simple question: what happened during those years that necessitated making every last vestige of it vanish? The result: they lied to me, so I tucked the novel away in a drawer, ostensibly forgotten. I picked it back up only when I found a way to tell the story of my family that, unbeknownst to me, had always been linked to those men and women - astronauts - who had traveled as far away as possible, farther than anyone had gone before, to understand what, ultimately, had always been within their reach. Laura Ferrero (Barcelona, 1984) is a journalist and an editor and she has been branded as a "breakout author" after the publication of her first book of short-stories Piscinas vacías (Alfaguara, 2016). Her articles and reviews are regularly featured in El País, ABC Cultural or La Vanguardia, among other outlets. She is also a screenwriter for several film and tv projects, including the awarded documentary El techo amarillo, the screen adaptation of Un amor by Sara Mesa or HBO's Foodie Love. Qué vas a hacer con el resto de tu vida (Alfaguara, 2017) was her acclaimed debut novel, followed by the successful collection of short-stories, La gente no existe (Alfaguara, 2021).