Institut Ramon LLull

Gemma Ruiz Palà returns with another vindication of female strength: this time through the winsome friendship between a forty-something Catalan documentary filmmaker, who models her red nails on Simone de Beauvoir’s and her regular manicurist Wenling, a Chinese immigrant from Qingtian, in the Zhejiang Province. The setting of their friendship, the Yang Salon, is both a microcosm of society and a place where women let their hair down, literally and figuratively. A place of shared secrets, support and empathy.

Over the years, the narrator grows closer to Wenling and her family, leading her to a greater understanding of what it takes to make a life in a new country and of what it means to be/become a Catalan. Told in a thoughtful first person interspersed with conversations from a range of salon customers, Ruiz Palà displays her gifted ear for dialogue and her open mind and heart.