Boulder: Shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize

The title says it all. A phenomenal accomplishment. To the more casual/commercial reader, I'd still recommend this as a propulsive read, although warning, you may suffer emotional damage during the reading of this book. A brilliant portrait of a relationship.

This first-person account of the ebbs and flows of a relationship is perceptive and poetic. The unnamed protagonist, nicknamed Boulder, is a complex, conflicted character, who navigates her changing relationship with Samsa across time and place. In turn witty, tender and poignant, this is a short but ever shifting story. The sparse prose is a real delight.

I find writing a review of a book that I have not read in its original language always challenging as I know I am also reviewing the translation and how well it has captured not just the linguistic style but also the spirit of the author - and all this without any reference for comparison. This is ever so true with this book as Eva Baltasar is I understand a poet with considerable volume of work, and to the translator's credit, this is evident in this novel.The eponymous character is a vivid and wonderful creation. I do not think that it matters if the reader agrees with her choices in life and I would imagine that most people can relate with different aspects of her feelings. In contrast, I thought that her partner was very sketchily drawn and, perhaps in an attempt to highlight the difference with Boulder, she often sounded like a caricature middle-class "mother-earth" type. I do wonder if this was meant to portray Boulder's frustration as the story is unfolding through her eyes but by condensing to a few pages their decade relationship and concentrating only at the start and the end, made Boulder less believable as well.

We read boulder for our book club and all loved it. Touching, insightful, sad and tender

This is a stunning book, very well written. My 3 stars is for the print itself, the book feels EXTREMELY cheap and thin. I got the standard paperback version and was kinda shocked when I opened it. However, not the end of the world.

Insular, reserved "Boulder", an unnamed protagonist who is known to us by her nickname only, falls in love with Samsa, and settles into the humdrum rhythm of domesticity in Iceland. Eventually, Samsa raises the possibility of parenthood, and Boulder reluctantly agrees, straining herself and the relationship as a result.At 105 pages, it is a crisp read that wastes no time getting to the point. In fact, Boulder, the character, has a relentless sense of insight and self-awareness that makes it tough to read the whole thing at one go. On one hand, her incisiveness is a welcome change, but it is also too detached from everyone around her. She mentions babies as "drawn to me the same way cats zero in on people who are allergic to them". She describes her girlfriend's professional accomplishment as "moving up...like a goat braving the Dolomites' slatelike ridges, climbing straight up to the highest peak". It's funny and biting but I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of such critical barbs. In fact, the book is entirely her inner voice which leaves little room to think of other people in any way but the crisp but emotionally distant analogy she reduces them to.I'm reviewing it a good 3 weeks or so after having read it. My immediate response back then was of admiration for the book and the character, both. Now, the former remains but the latter has dampened. I realize that as a reader, I was privy to her thoughts on work, relationships, domesticity, and maternity, but no one except a drinking buddy was aware of it within the book. It is not clear if she ever vocalized her inner monologue to her partner, with whom she spent over a decade before introducing a child to the dynamic. In fact, I went away feeling sympathetic towards her girlfriend, who I feel, was reduced to a caricature because she nursed maternal instincts, something Boulder didn't seem to think she herself had.As a book, this was brilliant. But I leave Boulder feeling that her nickname had less to do with a sense of stability and more with how she came across - cold and unmoving.

I picked this book on an impulse and it turned out to be one of the most "powerfully worded" books I've read so far.In those powerful words, there's a tenderness of human emotions. It has depicted the pendulum swaying between two diametically opposite decisions beautifully.

this story will remain with me for a long time. The writing is gripping, the characters are real people not just words on a page, the story brings all the emotions. This book I will keep on my shelf and read again,very worthwhile.

AMAZING READ!!!! brief but very emotional and asks important questions related to sacrifices made in relationships.