There are books you read and books that stay with you. And then there are those that do something more: they accompany you, breathe with you, touch your shoulder when you close the last page.
By Ehab Soltan
HoyLunes – “A Hug Can Do Everything”, the new work by José Antonio López Rastoll, belongs to that rare lineage of books that are not content merely to narrate: they embrace. In its sixteen stories, the Alicante-born author turns a gesture as old as the world into a literary territory full of revelations, humor, irony, and a tenderness that surprises even those already familiar with his career.
It is possible that López Rastoll has written here his most human… and also his most mischievous book.
The author who turns every gaze into a story
Alicante, 1974. Philologist, teacher, and writer with a sensitivity that avoids artificiality. This is how one might introduce José Antonio López Rastoll, but it would be unfair. Because his work — El mirador a Trece rosas negras, followed by Vareando nubes or Pelusillas en el ombligo — reveals something deeper: his talent for detecting the extraordinary within the everyday.
Those who read him know that his command of language comes not only from study, but from a way of looking at the world: precise, ironic, luminous when needed, uncomfortable when necessary. Finalist of the II International Flash Fiction Contest Jorge Alonso Curiel, winner of the Plaza Nueva Idazleak Prize, author of more than thirty contributions to anthologies, López Rastoll has built a voice that is his own, recognizable and versatile.
On El Mirador, his blog, he maintains a close dialogue with readers. There, one can sense something that this new book confirms: his writing embraces before it explains.
Sixteen stories crossed by the same heartbeat
The fascinating thing about “A Hug Can Do Everything” is that it does not simply speak of hugs: it uses them as narrative axes. Each story is a different way of approaching that gesture as simple as it is complex, as common as it is unrepeatable.
The reader will find:
Hugs that explode, capable of splitting a life in two.
Hugs that dissolve, like a last goodbye held in silence.
Hugs that never happened but hurt as if they had been real.
Hugs that return, unexpectedly, from memory or from places where the voice no longer dwells.
Hugs that heal, that mend what seemed irreparably broken.
With watchmaker’s precision, the author combines fantasy and realism, tenderness and sharpness. His stories — brief, pointed, luminous — remind us that restraint is also a form of intensity. It doesn’t take a hundred pages to move the reader; the exact word in the exact place is enough.
A work that lives on inside the reader
The most powerful aspect of this book is not its structure, nor even its technical skill. It is its emotional coherence. That invisible thread that weaves all the stories together and turns the hug into something more than a gesture: into a compass.
Because in these pages, a hug can be:
refuge,
wound,
farewell,
promise,
memory,
resistance.
There are stories that caress and others that hurt, but all share a rare quality: they invite you to feel. To pause. To recognize that tenderness, far from being naïve, can be a form of clarity.
“A Hug Can Do Everything” is a reminder that literature has that almost secret ability: to touch what we sometimes cannot even name ourselves.
When you close the book, a soft and powerful certainty remains: There are hugs that change stories. And there are stories that change the way we hug.
José Antonio López Rastoll will present his literary work at the 80 Mundos bookstore in Alicante on Saturday, January 31, 2026, at 7:30 p.m. And he hopes to end the year with several more presentations.
#hoylunes, #un_abrazo_lo_puede_todo, #josé_antonio_lópez_rastolls,
