{"id":7029871,"date":"2026-08-06T08:35:06","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T08:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/entertainment\/books\/i-made-you-up-inside-my-head-by-marta-perez-carbonell-transl-rosalind-harvey-whats-real-and-whats-not\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T08:35:06","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T08:35:06","slug":"i-made-you-up-inside-my-head-by-marta-perez-carbonell-transl-rosalind-harvey-whats-real-and-whats-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7029871","title":{"rendered":"I Made You Up Inside My Head by Marta P\u00e9rez-Carbonell (transl. Rosalind Harvey): What\u2019s real and what\u2019s not"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n<\/picture>\nOver recent years, I\u2019ve enjoyed several novels which explore the idea of who owns the story which is what attracted me to Marta P\u00e9rez-Carbonell\u2019s debut, I Made You Up Inside My Head.<\/em> That, and the strangers on a train trope described in the blurb which sees a writer, his friend and a translator meet on an overnight train from London to Edinburgh.<\/p>\n
Although all stories come to an end, not one of them does so completely; they are slowly woven together, just as these fragments were, waiting to form a larger tapestry.<\/em><\/p>\n
Alicia has moved from Madrid to London after a difficult breakup. Her new job requires her to spend five days a month in Edinburgh to which she travels by train. One Sunday evening, two men share her compartment, one much older than the other, both American. They engage in a conversation that Alicia can\u2019t help eavesdropping. Introductions over, it emerges that Terry is the subject of an excoriating piece accusing him of exploiting a young Swiss man who distinctly resembles the protagonist of his bestselling novel. Terry unfolds the story of how he met Hans, Alicia adding her own experiences of being deserted by her older lover on a remote island she\u2019d travelled to as his research assistant. As the train speeds through the night, intimate details are exchanged and Terry makes a revelation that threatens Bo\u2019s loyalty. Months later, Alicia will undertake another journey to try to find Hans and right a wrong.<\/p>\n
All the versions of a story co-exist, like the colours on a Rubik\u2019s cube. Each version, like each colour, can exist on its own, but the rest are still there, beyond our field of vision, and it is hard to get them all to align.<\/em><\/p>\n
Alicia\u2019s narrative is threaded through with extracts from Terry\u2019s novel as she recounts the confidences exchanged that night. Carbonell\u2019s overarching theme is storytelling; the way we each tell our own story, overlapping it with those we tell it to so that they become part of ours and we theirs. The question is at what point can a writer take liberties with someone else\u2019s story without causing harm or distress. It\u2019s a fascinating subject: we are all storytellers but few of us would be delighted to see intimate details told in confidence appear on the page, particularly if it might put us in danger. Carbonell expresses her ideas eloquently, smartly managing her narrative and bringing her novella to a satisfying close while avoiding the neat resolution that tends to happen in fiction but not in life. Looking forward to reading whatever she comes up with next.<\/p>\n
Sceptre Books: London 9781399739078 208 pages Hardback (NetGalley)<\/p>\n
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Over recent years, I\u2019ve enjoyed several novels which explore the idea of who owns the story which is what attracted me to Marta P\u00e9rez-Carbonell\u2019s debut, I Made You Up Inside My Head. That, and the strangers on a train trope described in the blurb which sees a writer, his friend and a translator meet on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7029872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[193502,4488,193503,32847,193504,5409,193508,482,193509,193505,193506,47569,5614,193507],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7029871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-contemporary-spanish-fiction","tag-harvey","tag-i-made-you-up-inside-my-head","tag-marta","tag-marta-perez-carbonell","tag-novella","tag-perezcarbonell","tag-real","tag-rosalind","tag-rosalind-harvey","tag-spanish-fiction-in-translation","tag-transl","tag-whats","tag-writers-in-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\n
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\n<\/picture>\nOver recent years, I\u2019ve enjoyed several novels which explore the idea of who owns the story which is what attracted me to Marta P\u00e9rez-Carbonell\u2019s debut, I Made You Up Inside My Head.<\/em> That, and the strangers on a train trope described in the blurb which sees a writer, his friend and a translator meet on an overnight train from London to Edinburgh.<\/p>\n