A very interesting work, and in this case the adjective is completely appropriate. Gil is a chemist, but she writes. She is a scientist, but she reads. The interpretation, so personal and so thorough (or so it seems), of the works of Edgar Allan Poe (and Melville, too) is a testament to her intelligence and her sensibility. 

 

The story that she offers us is one of those that you can read all at once, and its main attractions are the interests and dialogues of its genuine characters (normal, likeable, and intelligent people), the progressive presentation of secondary characters (few but appropriate), its mysterious data and facts, and the progress of the process of research, not at all hectic but exciting, related to Poe's literary works and maritime events and myths. All this pertains to an obsession to question and solve: to what extent does a writer have the power to condition our own lives? After reading Créixer amb Poe, the reader feels compelled to go to the primary source, the root, or the reason for the book: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Poe's essential work and probably one of the best stories of world literature. 

 

For just this reason, for inviting us to know the affairs and troubles of Poe's character, the writer Gil deserves our respect and her work our interest. Moreover, it invites us to read Melville's Billy Budd. As if this alone did not suffice, Créixer amb Poe is a fresh, risk-taking book about literature. A work born of and leading to other works. One knows that Poe tells of an implausible trip to the lands of the South Pole, with unexpected dazzling and terrifying events ensuing. 

 

M. Pilar Gil makes the most of all these events to create another enigmatic story that completely fits the liking of the young: references to shipwrecks, a mysterious character born in Tristan da Cunha, casual links between people that have the same name (in this case Richard Parker), with mentions of cannibalism in extreme situations, mesmerism, whale hunting, the legend of the flying Dutchman, ship's names… We even find, as in Poe's The Gold-bug, a cryptogram to solve (pages 112 to 115) with the well-explained method employed so brilliantly by the main character of this tale, created by Edgar Allan Poe, who is arguably the focal attraction of M. Pilar Gil's book. 

Book in Catalan.