“Solo quería bailar is a brilliant 200-page debut novel by a woman who is also a theater director and circus performer. A hilarious and irreverent book that reflects on topics like instability, failure, otherness, and the body. A novel called to mark an entire generation; one that strolls through the grand door of Spanish literature and plans to break everything down—because that’s what Greta García’s voice is like. It breaks you down and dislodges you.”

“It’s such a comforting and fortunate experience to come across disruptive voices—ones that are precisely willing to cause a sinkhole in the stable ground of Spanish literature. Voices that are bold, provocative, uninhibited, spontaneous, and brave like Greta García’s (Seville, 1992), who delivers a blow to literary and social conventions as well with her debut novel Solo quería bailar (Tránsito).”

“A painful, terrible cry in response to the way bureaucracy hits us on the head.”

“The words pour out of her like blood from a fatal wound.”

“This book is brilliant and beastly, a blow to social and literary conventions. When it’s published on March 1st, it will stun more than a few people.”

“This book bursts through Spanish literature due to its freshness and authenticity, but especially because Greta García’s hilarious voice is not self-congratulatory, but rather breaks through everything as it makes you laugh.”

“The bomb goes off in the reader’s hands, who at first arrives intrigued and then stays due to the charisma and humor of a clumsy, tender, and hurt character. A voice that reads as though it was spoken, with the phonetic particularities of the Sevillan capital, and that offers a view of a little-explored territory with its particular cast of characters. An unrepeatable novel, with a call for tenderness underneath it.”

“More than one of plot, this is a novel of leitmotifs (...) something that is difficult to maintain over almost 200 pages, but that is propelled by the strength of its protagonist: her Andalusian orality, her unbalanced humor and impertinence, her disenchanted amorality and sudden angers. And also by Greta García’s talent when writing short scenes that are somewhat orgiastic, or by the marvelous dialogues between the imprisoned women, both of which are virtues that give the novel a dramaturgical dimension. And by an intelligent rhythm, as euphoric as it is patient. Furthermore, there’s something clairvoyant about her eschatology. The literalness of Pili’s idiocy shows us a world that doesn’t work with the precision we expect.”

“This dancer, comedian, theater director, and circus performer’s break into Spanish literature is a lucid slap in the face that pushes us to reflect, invites action, discourages us, makes us laugh, and disgusts, captivates, and irritates us. Because of how real it is; because of how she embraces the scatological; because of how explicit it is no matter what subject she’s addressing—be it sexual desire, the feeling of being fed up with power, or the senselessness of prison.”

“The dancer and circus artist Greta García debuts with her novel Solo quería bailar, a hilarious, light-hearted chronicle about mental instability and the devastating consequences of dedicating your life to dance.”

“In Solo quería bailar, Greta García uses humor to write about the journey that takes a dance lover to a cell in Alcalá de Guadaira. And beyond. This tragicomic journey is written in Andalusian and is a plea against the bureaucratic blockades to cultural institutions. ‘Pili, you’re shining,’ her mother tells the narrator. And so, Pili does shine as us readers die of laughter and rage.”

“We find ourselves before a liquid, fun, and brutal debut voice, who opts for a fresh orality that doesn’t care about the rules of language...Solo quería bailar worries about topics like job and economic instability, which threaten this generation and those behind it. As such, she adds to the Kafkian despondency when it comes to bureaucracy, to criticism of the system and the denunciation of lack of care. The body becomes urban, capital, and life a mere procedure.”

“In this novel, each paragraph is an exquisite rarity despite the spontaneous language that the protagonist uses to maintain her cleft innocence. (...) She is a woman who inhabits the most absolute margins, in those places where no name or life has any meaning. (...) Solo quería bailar is a unique book, the fruit of an enormous talent when it comes to breaking literary rules. It is bright, sparkling, and quick. (...) What an experience it has been to collide with this story; what a crystal clear provocation is housed in its pages; how fortunate am I for the wounds it’s left behind; how relevant is the joy that its sincerity leaves with me. Don’t skip reading this book, because its enduring orality has begun to give rise to the future’s most charismatic and altruistic side.”