I actually quite liked this one despite how long it was. Though I can’t tell how much of the writing style is Laforet and how much is the translation, it’s by far my favourite so far (though the bar is low). I’m starting to think it may not be the texts that are the issue and that I’m just bad at names between this story and ‘The Shrouded Woman’… or maybe I need to stop reading the books late at night. Or both. Probably both.
One thing I liked about this book was that it felt plausible, it felt like it could’ve happened to anyone. Andrea started excited to go to Barcelona for university, and to live with her relatives, but it just does downhill in a lot of ways. That being said I can appreciate that it isn’t all negative, there are nice hints of fun, and friendship, and such. Interspersed between the casual cruelty and general dysfunctionality of her family/home life, is Ena and Andrea’s other friends, and even Gloria. Her story here isn’t so one note despite the overarching feeling of heaviness and despair due to the political and personal settings. I kind of love the way the family and their home is described as though they and it all are dead, like they (or at least a part of them) had died in the civil war, I love how it shows, even subtly at times, the effects of the war. Phrases like: the air was “stagnant and rotting”, the scene was “agonizing”, and more.
One thing I can also appreciate the fact that it showed Andrea’s preconceptions about Barcelona, ones that were proven wrong: ‘… since all my impressions were enveloped in the wonder of having come, at last, to a big city, adored in my daydreams because it was unknown” (pg. 3). She daydreams about the city through rose-tinted glasses, which then transfers to her perception of the events around her.
One thing I loved was the focus on art and the pursuing of it. Even today, pursuing art (not just something in ‘Arts’ but actual art) is often seen as silly and basically dooming youtself to be poor and destitute. This is especially true with the rise of AI and some people seeing art as worthless, or something that needs to be easier and less effortful, as though it’s a right and not a privilege. With that in mind, the fact that it’s such a focus for the story as whole, is amazing in my perspective. Art is something that goes back to the earliest of humans, we’ve seen it through every era, so to see these people in a post civil war environment, the country arguably in ruins, still pursuing art, just feels right as though everything is coming full circle. I mean even her uncles have (had, more or less) artistic jobs. I’d argue this is almost an aspect of hope? The world didn’t truly end despite it feeling like it did for those people. It does kind of make me wonder if there’s anything more inherently human than the prospensity to create art?
All of that being said, despite everything, does Andrea truly take away nothing?