Nerea Erimia: Writing from the Crack

Nerea Erimia does not speak of perfection as a goal, but rather as a trap. She has just published Literarily Yours with Planeta, but when she thinks about her writing, she does not resort to the idea of a polished, comfortable, or impeccable novel; instead, she refers to something much more revealing: the crack. “I am an author who likes to write from the crack and not from perfection,” she asserts. In that phrase, there is not only a poetics but also a declaration of intentions regarding the kind of characters she chooses to bring to life and the type of emotional truth she is interested in exploring.

For Erimia, perfection is not only suspect in life; it can also be in literature. “Unfortunately, there are many people who believe they are perfect or, rather, who deceive themselves into believing they are out of necessity,” she reflects. This observation, seemingly aimed against a certain contemporary theatricality, ultimately projects onto the romantic novel, a territory where readers abound who seek characters that are too whole, too secure, too comforting. “There are many people who want to read about perfect characters,” she points out, perhaps because “you want to read something safe, comfortable, with the happy ending that life does not give you.” In the face of that temptation, her response is clear: “My plans do not include contributing to continue deceiving ourselves in this way.”

Thus, Literarily Yours is born, a novel that, under the forms of romantic comedy, seems less interested in the fantasy of perfection than in the discomfort of looking oneself in the face. “I believe it is a novel about falling in love, about daring to trust, but above all, I believe it is a novel about liking oneself,” the author summarizes. This phrase illuminates quite precisely the heart of the book: love understood not only as a bond with another but also as an intimate battle with one’s own insecurity.

This tension is concentrated in Bianca Blake, a protagonist whom Erimia does not attempt to sweeten. On the contrary: she defines her with a mix of harshness and affection. “Insecure, outspoken, and proud,” she says when asked to summarize her in three words. At another moment, she adds that Bianca is “direct, unfiltered, and a little quirky,” and that a part of her readers may recognize themselves precisely in that chaotic, less complacent, less ornamental zone. She also thinks of those who “are a little tired of the typical rainbow woman stereotype” and seek a character “more uncomfortable in some way.” This does not seem a casual formulation: Erimia does not want a heroine designed to please without flaws, but rather a figure with edges, with contradictory impulses, and with a conflicted relationship with herself.

Opposite her stands Adam Kingston, who also decisively deviates from the usual mold of the romantic hero. “He is not a common male character stereotype, but what a man of this new century should be,” asserts the author. And she immediately adds an observation that opens up a broader reading: “It seems that we are still afraid to write them or for them to even exist.” Adam is a romantic novel editor in New York, works at a publishing house that almost exclusively hires women, reads the genre, defends it, and enjoys romantic movies. He is, in Erimia’s words, a character “in communion with his feminine side, without neglecting the masculine.”

The dynamic between them rests precisely on this displacement of roles and energies. “The contrast between Adam and Bianca, her showing such masculine attitudes and him such feminine ones, makes the dance between the two delightful,” she explains. This idea of a “dance” is revealing: rather than rigidly opposing them, the novel seems interested in complementarity, in the interplay of tensions between two characters who do not fit into the most predictable models of commercial romance. Here too, Erimia’s purpose is perceptible: to move within the genre without completely surrendering to its automatons.

Because Literarily Yours is not just a love story; it is also a novel aware of the tradition in which it is inscribed and of the mechanisms with which it interacts. Erimia clearly reclaims the playful margin of romantic comedy. “One of the advantages of writing romantic comedy is to play, joke, and take certain liberties,” she says. And she pushes that idea a step further when she defends the possibility of playing with “clichés, with what has already been written and what is yet to come,” and even with breaking the fourth wall. Far from hiding the codes of the genre, she exhibits, works them, and subjects them to a constant conversation with the reader.

This play with tradition is not limited to narrative resources. It is also anchored in a very specific literary genealogy. Literarily Yours, its author states, “is in some way a love letter to the authors who came before, but especially to the authors who are now and to the authors who will come after.” There is in that phrase a defense of the female lineage of writing, but also a willingness for support, almost continuity. It is not surprising, therefore, that when she imagines which author from the past Bianca would sit down with for tea, the answer emerges without hesitation: Jane Austen. More than a cultural nod, the choice seems to condense a sensitivity: the taste for wit, emotional observation, irony, and dialogue with a tradition of female writers who have thought about love without ever reducing it to simple ornamentation.

The settings also participate in this dialogue between emotion, imagination, and identity construction. The novel begins in New York and then shifts to the Cotswolds, with stops in places like Bibury. But Erimia does not use these spaces merely as decoration; rather, they serve as a way to portray her characters. “Both cities describe my characters,” she explains. “When one of them is describing that place they love so much, they are actually describing themselves without realizing it.” The observation is particularly significant in the case of Bianca, who “somehow found her home in New York after coming from a home she did not consider home.” Later, the trip to England and the relationship with Adam again displace that idea of belonging, as if the emotional map of the book were also a search for home.

The choice of England also responds to a deliberate imaginary. “We love gentlemen, we love manners, we love period dramas,” admits Erimia, aware that around the country gravitates a certain shared sentimental fantasy. “In some way, we have romanticized England to the point of thinking it is the cradle of all that,” she adds. This cultural fascination, far from being anecdotal, is part of the tone of the novel and its web of references.

Ultimately, between New York and the English countryside, between the accepted clichés and the desire to twist them, between Austen’s legacy and Bianca’s contemporary discomfort, what appears most clearly is Nerea Erimia’s fidelity to a concept of writing. She is not interested in the mask of security, neither in life nor in fiction. “It’s not the one who has the last word who wins,” she says in one of the clearest moments of her discourse, “but the one who truly learns something along the way.” Perhaps that is why her characters do not aspire to perfection, but to something much more difficult: recognizing their fears, traversing their contradictions.