A very contemporary Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this five-part novel chronicles a polyphonic confluence of events during a single summer’s night at a queer music festival. Set amid the mystical backdrop of remote woods, the story follows a wide cast of queer and cis-het characters whose very disparate realities unexpectedly converge within an illusory, playful, inebriated evening. The nexus of the story hinges on the experiences of two friends and main characters: Ava, a wealthy, conventionally attractive heiress, and Agnes, a reclusive, bisexual, and literary daughter of deceased bohemian artists. The two attend the festival with the intent of seeing Agnes’s favorite queer music group perform: Titania & the Tales. In addition to these voices, we encounter many more: a nonbinary worker at a Japanese ice cream stand, a Popper King obsessed with Emily Brontë, a J.K. Rowling-hating photographer, a rowdy circle of straight men who have penetrated what should have been a safe and bigotry-free space, and a life-saving group of drag queens. Via a sinuous web of incidents, the self-proclaimed cis-het Ava falls in love with a trans man, and the once-hopelessly-romantic Agnes forms a casually sexual friendship with a man named Demetrio.

 One of the most salient strengths of the novel lies in its boldly experimental nature. What is at face-value a play (or at least a play in form), is subverted by its incorporation of poems, narratives, song excerpts—among other literary mediums. The novel challenges any inclination to categorize, defiantly standing outside any genre. Such defiance, along with its witty jargon, sassy character voices, and bawdy subject matter (sex, drugs, astrology) makes for a strikingly modern novel, all the while integrating literary tradition, too. Brimming with references to Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, and Marguerite Duras—among others—the story repeatedly nods at these now-classic tales and the idea that they once, too, shocked and confounded readers. In a similar vein, Éxtasis… prods at reinvention on a thematic level, it asks how being at a festival in the middle of dim and distant woods allows for said reinvention; and it asks how much of our identity hinges on our environment and the parameters we set for ourselves. The novel’s grand scale parallels Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: a euphoric night in the woods wherein everyone’s perceived “truth” is destabilized.

 

“Like a Shakespeare’s comedy adapted by Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Cher’s choreographer, ‘Ecstasy on a Midsummer Night’ invents characters to love forever. A pastoral novel on acid, a feverish and hallucinatory romantic drama, a bittersweet comedy of intrigues where the theatre of the world is shamelessly stripped bare before the reader’s eyes. Through a sassy and inventive oral language and an overflowing imagination, Rocío Collins narrates idealized loves and bodies impossible to categorize that frolic, confused and happy, in pleasant meadows. The novel’s festival-like ecstasy breaks the conventions around sex and love, identity and desire and makes joy an emancipatory literary force.” Begoña Méndez

“Rocío Collins delivers a novel of classical references, psychological depth and nods to Shakespeare… Collins plays with formal innovation and does so with ease and without deceiving anyone. Writing is something playful and transversal… This book is a careful call to leave our lives and re-enter them with a clear gaze.  Rocío Collins is lethal.” Andrea Toribio, Book of the Week, Babelia, El País

 “A subversive novel that draws from Shakespearean classicism, wild and untamed…a devilish narration of baroque intensity which…engulfs anyone who dares to dive into this literary delirium…This unrestrained vaudeville will leave the reader wanting more. Jane Austen unchained!” Raquel Jimenez, Zenda Libros

 “Brilliant and disruptive, Éxtasis en una noche de verano is a first novel that is as entertaining as it is surprising, full of wit, audacity and talent. (…) The intense literary references of the plot together with its playful and unhinged sense are striking. Also the subtle imprint of the classics marked by the almost Shakespearean title and the devotion to Jane Austen. A great debut.” Elena Costa, El Cultural

 “Dazzling, literary splendour…wild, agile…a deliberate and entertaining absurdity, a carnival in itself.” Juan Marques, La lectura

 “I finish the book like Agnes and Ava at the entrance to the festival: fascinated-wide-eyed-overjoyed, infinitely euphoric, abducted by both the lexicon and the mental agility of these Collinsian characters with whom I have laughed, danced, celebrated, moaned, applauded, cried, suffered and enjoyed. I finish the book exhausted and happy, devoted, dazed, and affirming, as in one of Agnes’s soliloquies in verse: I died for beauty.” Gema Monlleó, Detour

 

Los 25 libros más esperados de octubre de 2024 – Babelia, El País

 Best Spanish Debut Novels 2024 – El Cultural

 Best Books in 2024 – Vogue Spain

 

 “A book committed to exalting love as the core of life to which all experiences, perspectives and scars are attached.” Marcos Almendros, Nuebo

 “Actress and performer Rocío Collins jumps into the narrative arena with a debut that is as fast-paced as it is hilarious.” Zenda

 “A mix of Fleabag, Shakespearean comedy and a one sequence shot to talk in a generational and highly personal way about gender, love, sex, drugs and friendship.” Literaturbia

 

430 pages – Original Language: Spanish World/Spain (H&O editores, 2024)