The 'British' writer residing in the south of Gran Canaria, Jeannie van Rompaey, has released a novel this summer based on everyday things that happen between Maspalomas and London: it is called New Beginnings and for people who want to strengthen their English in the summer it is useful to enjoy this reading with the knowledge of the descriptions that the writer makes. She, as if she were a poet, is an unfinished deer in red that breathes in the autumnal depth of the stained glass windows. On the lacerated edge of the soul's wounds, still unhealed, Van Rompaey unweaves her body at the roots. The doe sleeps with her eyes open without seeing the storm when she, taken by the hand of Saint John of the Cross, and already inflamed with love, goes out into the open air without being noticed, her house being calm again.
The writer starts with what she knows about the island. Topics that little by little, with the text shaken by time and space, Jeannie van Rompaey attempts a metaphysical content, the ontological search for hollowness in the lyrical expression of her British compatriots in the south of the island who come to seek sun and never to consider the break between the body and the soul to lead us to Aristotle and his Nicomachean Ethics.
Set in the south of Gran Canaria, friendships arise between English-speaking expatriates. Many of these people might never have met if they didn't live abroad. Jeannie van Rompaey states that "this often results in unlikely friendships between people from diverse backgrounds with different beliefs and attitudes to life" because "the development of the fictional friendships in this novel is explored through separate stories that intertwine between yes, as lives overlap."
The parade of characters seems chaotic but has its order. Queenie and Ellen have been friends for fifty years, but they both have secrets that they are determined to keep from each other. Gina, a disillusioned young artist, embarks on a strangely erotic relationship with Adam, a gay transvestite and drag queen. Well-meaning, pleasure-loving Kat, the wife of a high-earning timeshare manager, tries to help Joanne, a woman with limited income struggling to settle on the island. "The central idea of the novel is the close relationship that develops between the troubled artist Gina and the optimistic, materialistic Kat," says Jeannie van Rompaey. Is all this real? She maintains that "some friendships last longer than others. There are all kinds of reasons why friends break up, many of them discussed in these stories. As people come and go, new friendships form and old ones disintegrate." ".
