Isabelle Cornaz's 'Bahía' Explores Family History and Estrangement

Isabelle Cornaz's second book, "Bahía," delves into the complexities of family history and the lingering sense of not quite belonging. The work, published by La Baconnière, uses fragmented, poetic prose to chart the author's emotional landscape. Cornaz, a writer and journalist, navigates her feelings of estrangement from Palamos, a small coastal town in Catalonia where her mother was born and raised before moving to Switzerland.

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Three syllables with archaic resonances.

The book captures a "familiar strangeness" associated with places visited since childhood. Cornaz describes Palamos with "three archaic-sounding syllables," a place where she feels neither fully native nor foreign. The prose evokes sensory details of childhood summers, recalling the dry, mineral taste of the air mixed with sand and chips. She remembers leaving the beach for midday meals, spending long afternoons in dimly lit rooms with heavy wooden furniture, waiting for the town to awaken from its siesta at 5 p.m.

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In the time of childhood, we would leave the beach for lunch. Endless afternoons in the dim light with heavy wooden furniture waiting for the village to wake up from its torpor with the reopening of shops at 5 p.m.