I loved this book so much of a woman who is trying to move on after the death of her partner who revealed he was leaving her before he died. How would you react? Such a strange thing, are you angry or sad, how do you move on even though you know the person didn't want to be with you anyway? Dark and funny and honest, this was absolutely lovely!

Thank you for handling the complex topic of grief so delicately, and how penetrable it can be. This book has its ups and downs, and deals with heavy topics without leaving you feeling deflated. A great read.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53294479-learning-to-talk-to-plants

A depiction of grief and losing a loved one that doesn’t seem to ever happen. A depiction that was real and moving. I tore though this and felt everything that was written wholly and fully.

I have tried reading this so many times and unfortunately I just can't get it to stick. It doesn't catch me in interest in storyline or writing style unfortunately so just not a right match for me.

I was provided with a free ebook copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for this.

I wanted to love this book... but I didn't.

This book follows a woman who finds out that her long term partner is cheating on her right before he is killed in a traffic accident. It follows her for the next year or so as she tries to live with her grief having lost the man she loved but also feeling betrayed by him. She also keeps the affair secret from her family and his, so it is something she suffers through alone.

This book was beautifully written but I didn't ever feel totally compelled or gripped by the story. It took me almost two months to finish reading it, even though it's quite short, as I just found myself drawn to other books more than this.

The prose was gorgeous, I just didn't find myself hooked on the story.

I enjoyed bits and pieces of this story, but it mostly felt like a lot of fluff because the narrative is so introspective and flighty. I kept waiting for the story to start or something to happen, but we just kept floating along with seemingly no purpose.

Learning to Talk to Plants is supposed to be about coming to terms with grief, specifically, grief that is more complicated than it first appears. But the emotions feel superficial, the language is flowery but indistinct, and nothing happens. I ended up skimming more than I usually do because a lot of the writing was superfluous to the plot. Characters were introduced and disappeared with no purpose or explanation, and I couldn't figure out why I was reading this book.

I couldn't tell if Paula actually cared about her husband leaving her or dying or not. And considering the 'other woman' showed up at the hospital with the rest of the family, it seemed unbelievable that no one besides Paula and Nacho knew that Mauro was having an affair. Even their 'confrontation' was sterile and pointless. I kept waiting for something to happen with these plants that were so important they were in the title, but Paula's connection to Mauro's plants, or even the point of their existence, was never established or explored.

I don't know, maybe the prose is just too intellectual and symbolic for me; all I know is nothing was explained and the lack of information or depth made this a pointless read for me.

"A father's pain is different from a mother's and a mother's is different from a sister's, and a woman's pain is different from that of a woman who's just been dumped."

3.5 ✨

In "Learning to Talk to Plants," Paula loses her partner Mauro a few minutes after he announces to her that he leaves her for another woman. After Mauro's accident, Paula is left behind to deal with the aftermath -- her own grief and loss for losing her companion and friend, hers and Mauro's family and friends that are unaware of his decision to leave her after all these years and marry a younger woman that only understand one side of her pain, facing a new life without him while also accepting the lies he was telling her.

What I liked most about this book is how Marta Orriols makes loss and the pain that comes from it appear as a unique experience for every individual. We see Paula struggling with the loss of her partner in her own unique way, going through the various stages of grief in just a few brief moments.

"We aren't the same woman and as such we don't share the same pain, despite which we've both been recruited by grief, like an infectious agent with the ability to reproduce and be transmitted irrespective of the wishes of those left behind. My pain is mine and I don't want her coming anywhere near it."

I'm usually drawn to books that deal with loss and grief as they often help me process my own. In the past, I've dealt with moments of getting upset with my own memory, for not doing a better job of remembering, so I've found the following quote inspiring and reassuring:

"I've read that over long term our brains employ reconstructions and abstractions to store memories, which is why we can even go to the extreme of producing false ones. I wonder how I can hold on to your memory, intact and in a fair way. It would be much easier if I could experience those memories in a chronological order, but that's not the case. They appear randomly, coming and going in miscellaneous bursts that don't help to give shape to the collection of contrasts that was your life, or your life with me."

Even though there were quite a few parts that I couldn't relate to Paula's point of view and didn't enjoy reading her inner thoughts as much, I found Marta's writing enjoyable and she's one of the authors I will keep an eye out in the future. This was one of those books that I highlighted quite a few parts of it as the writing was excellent!

"It's so hard for us to be aware of others' pain, to imagine how far the ice extends beneath the water's surface."

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC.

A quiet, candid portrait of grief in all its complexity and weight. Reading about death will always feel “too soon”, I think, both uncomfortable and comfortable at the same time. This novel is a beautiful old photograph of loss.

This immersive and moving novel tells the story of Paula, a 40-year-old neonatologist living in Barcelona, whose long-term partner suddenly announces that he is going to leave her and then almost immediately afterwards is killed in a road accident, leaving her to cope with loss and grief on two levels. As she navigates a future without him, the author sensitively and with real insight explores all the complexities and nuances of Paula’s grief in an emotionally honest and compassionate way. True to life, beautifully written and well-paced, it’s a gentle tale, a sad but not depressing one, and I very much enjoyed it.

An interesting story where you follow Paula as she works through the process of grieving both the physical death of her longtime boyfriend/partner as well as the loss of their emotional connection. At times, the writing is her internal monologue where she is talking to Mauro as if he is there.

Family and friends give her time to grieve, but do not realize her deep, dark secret. Specifically, that the grief is also for his ending their relationship just hours before his death.

Over the course of a year, she begins to experience "signs of life" so that by the end of the story she is truly moving forward with her life. But there are plenty of bumps along the way.

This title was translated, but I did not experience any issues with the translation.

Learning to Talk to Plants is a delicate novel, in which the intensity of an all-shattering loss is outlined with an unprecedented tenderness. In Barcelona, a couple is having lunch in a restaurant: they have been together for twenty years and Paula is about to tell Mauro that she would like to get married and have a child, but before she can speak, he announces that he has another younger woman who he has decided he wants to be with, and, just like that, their relationship and love story are over. He then gets up and walks away, leaving Paula alone and furious. Two hours later, a phone call informs her that Mauro has had a devastating car accident just outside the restaurant caused by a driver who ran a red light and is very serious condition in hospital. Paula will never see him alive again. Paula Cid is a 42-year-old neonatologist looking after some of the most poorly children and she is passionate about her job. After her unexpected loss, she cannot help but withdraw into herself. Abandoned, she remains behind and diligently looks for something to hold on to. To her great surprise, she finds it in Mauro's apartment, where she lived with him. Gradually, a new path unfolds for her, in which anger, fear and desire alternate.

Slowly but surely, Paula's survival instinct is fuelled, and she eventually learns to reconcile with a world she no longer recognises. This is a compelling, evocative and heart-wrenching novel written with poignancy and delicacy from the perspective of a woman who struggles to know exactly how to feel over her double loss but who is progressing towards rebirth. Award-winning Catalan author Marta Orriols' narrative, evocative, intense and reflective, invites us to stay with what is essential in life. An intimate book that weaves a close-knit story capable of dealing with the most heartfelt pain with a very unusual stylistic maturity, the stream of consciousness narrative works exceptionally well and this sensitive and profound tale really does highlight how closely the line between love and hate actually is and how they often go hand in hand. The novel is the elaboration of Paula’s complex, two-sided mourning: pain for the loss of who she thought was her life partner and anger for his sudden betrayal, both of which require her to recalibrate. It places a magnifying glass to reveal the details of the female soul, taking us in seconds from pain to tenderness, from a smile to the most dramatic emotion. Highly recommended.

Paula is grieving. Sometimes grief comes layered with anger and betrayal.

The first revelation in the book is quite startling but the pace was frustratingly slow. Barely anything actually happens in this story. I'm here for novels centred around character development but this is simply internal dialogue of a person trying to understand how she feels about the loss of her partner.

3.75 stars / This review will be posted at BookwormishMe.com today.


Paula is grieving. Having suffered not one loss, with the death of her partner, but the loss of him shortly before his actual death. Mauro had just told Paula that their relationship was over.

Now she is trying to move forward with her life as a neonatologist and a single woman. Very few people know that Mauro was ending their relationship, and so everyone expects her to be grieving for his death. Paula shares with us her grief, anger, and despondency in a beautifully written novel by Orriols.

When reading a translated novel, it’s not only the original writing, but the masterful translation that is needed to convey the story. Lethem has done such an amazing job of giving us a slow moving story with beautiful prose. This is not a “read it one sitting” novel. It is one to be savored. It is a very thoughtful story that is paced for us to absorb Paula’s grief the same way she appears to be moving, slowly.

Recommended for it’s lovely writing.

Learning to Talk to Plants primarily deals with death and grief, but the search for overcoming these inevitably leads our heroine to find new ways to "be", and maybe if not necessarily better then definitely ways that feel right for her, and this to me marks a spectacular coming-of-age, despite being "forced" by external circumstances. ⁠
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So what is it actually about? ⁠
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Paula's unmarried partner of many years has died in a car accident and there's a double twist in the fact that hours before his death, he told her he was leaving her for another woman. ⁠
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The shock (or perhaps, shame) forces Paula to keep this a secret, while both his and her family and friends are trying to help her deal with the grief. Paula's grief, however, is coupled or better yet toppled by anger, anger that she didn't have time to deal with and is now burying inside herself until it cannot longer be ignored. She works as a neonatologist in Barcelona and is totally devoted to her job. The work she does along with her colleagues and the atmosphere are well captured and integrated within the threads of her grief. ⁠
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Despite the grim topics (death, grief, loneliness), the book exudes hope and positivity. There's a lot on desire, romance, female friendship, jealousy, father-daughter relationships, and all these bring something hopeful to the table. ⁠
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Learning to Talk to Plants is a fantastic piece of psychological fiction that goes deep into character development. I was hooked and fully invested. I'm not surprised it has won a prize for the best Catalan novel.⁠
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Thanks to Pushkin Press and NetGalley for my advanced digital copy. ⁠

From the publisher: “By turns devastating and darkly funny, Learning to Talk to Plants is a piercingly honest portrayal of grief – and of the many ways to lose someone.”

The publisher’s quote above really says it all for this book, at least for me. I rated this book a 4/5, mostly because it was so painful to read. I personally didn’t find the dark humor noted above, but there was quite a bit I found devastating.

Marta Orriols has truly taken the reader to a dark place, albeit she works herself out of it and into a better place. The writing is strong, however, there were times when I was unsure who she was talking to, or if it was a flashback vs. the present time. Since it is written in first person, protagonist Paula, a neonatal physician, is often talking to herself, to the object of her grief, or to a coworker. Because everything in the novel becomes marked by “before X happened” or “after X happened,” flashbacks taken out of present time but still written in present tense are sometimes a bit confusing.

The book is peppered with medical jargon, most of which is self-explanatory taken in context, but it seems realistic for a doctor to speak—and think—that way, even when we hear her inner dialogue. I found Paula’s professional life, also filled with darkness and loss, to be interesting. I was not as intrigued by her post-trauma love life and attempts at returning to the vitality of her pre-trauma life.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an e-book version of this new novel.

I was granted a free copy of this text by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This text was LONG and drawn out with very little character growth. Most of the novel is focused on the introspection and feelings of a main character that I struggled to connect with. This is a translation as well, so the true text may be better written than the choppy translated version I read.

DNF at 76%

Do not get me wrong, this book has some strong points. It dares to focus on emotionally difficult topics, and at points the writing is beautiful in an ethereal way.

That said, it just is not a right fit for me. The beautiful writing does not distract enough from a main character who often is too practical and pragmatic for me to connect to, or to connect her to the emotionally devastating and difficult situation she is in, and the likewise devastated way she reacts. It somehow does not add up for me, especially since the story seems to jump from one situation to another quite a bit.

For someone who can get through such, I think this could be a wonderful book. As I said, it just is not a right fit for me.

Thanks NetGalley, Pushkin Press and Marta Orriols for an ARC to review.
First of all I fell in love with this book's writing style.
The book narrates Paula's grief journey after losing her long life partner in a tragic car accident, all her friends and family members tries to comfort her and ease her grief while missing a major piece of information; Mauro just confessed he's leaving her for another woman whom he was having an affair for a while....hours later the accident steals away his life and turns Paula's life upside down, she is not sure whether to be sad or angry at Mauro..
Paula works as a neonatal pediatrician, the battle she and the entire team undergoes every single shift in order to save lives while unfortunately losing others in the process didn't make her ready for Mauro's death.
A lovely emotional excellent book. I absolutely loved it.

Sadly this book didn't really work for me. I loved the premise but the execution fell flat and I could not connect to Paula at all. The prose was very flowery, overly so for my tastes and to the point that every paragraph seemed to consist of convoluted metaphors or superfluous description.

I just couldn't sink into a style of writing that felt more akin to the audio description added to programmes for those who are visually impaired, It read as though Paula was describing everything her senses could detect but not how any of it made her think or feel. For a book dealing with loss, betrayal and grief I struggled to feel any emotion whatsoever from Paula, entirely due to the author falling into the "tell not show" trap.

This isn't a novel that I would necessarily be drawn to but I am sure glad that I took a chance. This book focuses on grief, Paula loses her long-term boyfriend hours after he tells her he is leaving her for another woman. This was translated beautifully, and the plot ran so smoothly. Just really enjoyed this book and would recommend it.