Indie Spotlight: Eugene Costello

Welcome to our Indie Spotlight series, in which TNBBC gives small press authors the floor to shed some light on their writing process, publishing experiences, or whatever else they'd like to share with you, the readers!

Today's spotlight shines on Eugene Costello who released Puta Madre on August 5th.

Why I Made a Colombian Migrant and Former Sex Worker the Heroine of My Novel

I arrived in Spain to begin my new life just a couple of weeks before the country entered one of the strictest pandemic lockdowns in the world. Arrangements to connect the electricity, water, gas and Wi-Fi in my rented apartment ground to a halt. For weeks, I was permitted to leave only to walk the hundred metres to my nearest grocery store for essentials.

 

Shortly before lockdown, I had decided to employ a cleaner and, through word of mouth, found a Colombian single mother then in her late thirties, with a four-year-old son.

It proved a wise decision for reasons that had little to do with cleaning. We became immediate friends, her infectious laughter and singing filling the apartment like sunlight. When restrictions permitted, she welcomed me into her home, where I could take my laptop and work in her son’s bedroom using her Wi-Fi. Love is as love does, and she made me feel at home when I was far from my own family.

Valencia is compact enough to feel less like a metropolis than a collection of barrios and interconnected villages. It is also home to sizeable communities from Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America. As I applied myself to learning Spanish, my friend introduced me to people, stories and food that revealed lives very different from my own.

There was always food.

Somebody died? We’ll cook.

Won the lottery? We’ll cook.

A son scored a goal at his football match? We’ll cook.

Food marked sorrow, celebration and all the ordinary moments between them. The voices, jokes, anxieties and ambitions I encountered began crowding my imagination. Over time, elements of them were made flesh in the characters I tried to create—not as portraits of particular individuals, but as fictional people shaped by the world in which I was now living.

The story of the world is the story of migration. People leave because they are hungry, frightened, ambitious, trapped or simply convinced that another life must be possible somewhere else. Usually, it is a mixture of all five. They arrive carrying recipes, memories, obligations and expectations, and begin the exhausting business of constructing a new life.

Daniela emerged from that world, but she was never intended to represent every Colombian woman, every migrant or every mother. No character could bear that burden, and no writer should impose it. She is one woman confronting a particular set of circumstances and making choices that are sometimes courageous, sometimes questionable and always her own.

Through Sofía — whose name I have changed — I met several women whose circumstances had led them into sex work. They were among the warmest, funniest and most generous people I encountered. What also struck me was how little moral judgement they faced within their own communities. Migrant life can mean badly paid work, insecure housing, uncertain legal status and almost no employment protection. People do what they need to do to survive, and their friends understand that.

I did not want sex work to define Daniela, still less to present her as either a fallen woman or a helpless victim waiting to be rescued. It is something she does during a difficult period of her life; it is not the sum of who she is. She remains a daughter, sister, mother, friend and, eventually, entrepreneur.

That is why I gave her the idea for Empanadas de Puta Madre, the food business through which she transforms her life. She does not escape poverty through luck or the intervention of a benevolent man. She builds something from the skills, recipes and determination she already possesses. Her son’s eventual literary success extends that story into the next generation: the child of a migrant woman who was denied an education becomes an acclaimed writer.

I wanted to celebrate the contribution migrants make to the societies in which they settle without pretending that migration is easy or that every struggle produces a triumphant ending. Above all, I wanted Daniela to be permitted the same complexity that fiction has traditionally granted more privileged characters: to make mistakes, take risks, survive compromises and create a life larger than the one circumstances appeared to have allotted her.

I hope I have done her justice.

 

 

You can buy the English paperback of Puta Madre here and the Kindle version here.

The sequel Beyond Puta Madre is available in paperback and Kindle.

 Daniela Arango arrives in Valencia from Colombia with little money, limited choices and a determination to create a better life.

After surviving through sex work and cleaning jobs, she becomes a mother and begins building something of her own: Empanadas de Puta Madre, a food business rooted in the recipes, resilience and communal spirit she brought with her from home.

As Daniela’s fortunes change, so does the life of her son, Daniel, whose literary ambitions carry the family’s story into another generation.

Set against the streets, neighbourhoods and migrant communities of Valencia, Puta Madre is a novel about motherhood, migration, friendship and the stubborn human capacity for reinvention.

Eugene Costello is a British-Irish journalist and author based in Valencia, Spain. During a career spanning more than thirty years, his work has appeared in numerous British national newspapers and magazines. He is the founder and editor of Valencia Life and writes about Spain, migration, public health and the glorious absurdities of everyday life. His novels Puta Madre and Beyond Puta Madre follow a Colombian migrant who rebuilds her life in Valencia through motherhood, friendship, food and formidable determination.