#TeamAntoni <3

I’ll be honest, I don’t think I took the disclaimer about Mercè Rodoreda’s The Time of the Doves being dark as seriously as I should have.  Knowing it was set in the Spanish Civil War, I wasn’t surprised to see that there were bombs and hunger and death. But the fact that most of it is presented through Natalia’s small, exhausted observations about daily life somehow made it feel even more shocking. And then, of course, she decides to kill her children. 

Maternal filicide isn’t something I expected to encounter in a novel I’m reading for a romance studies course.. and yet, there it was. So ground down by poverty and war that death begins to look like mercy. It’s drastic, and it’s horrifying, and still, Rodoreda writes it so frankly without spectacle. There’s no dramatic moment of realization for her, it just somehow appears. Now, it would be easy for me to sit here comfortably and judge her decision making skills. But that feels almost insulting? I’ll never understand what it means to watch your children starve during wartime, or to have every structure that once held your life together collapse (at least I sure hope I won’t). So I suppose it’s a good thing that the novel doesn’t ask me to approve of her decisions because… well, I just don’t. And, as if it had to be said… not a fan of Quimet, BIG fan of Antoni (our little cripple <3)! 

While it’s quite obvious given the title of the book, I was really intrigued by the symbolism of the doves (or rather, pigeons). Quimet fills their apartment with them and they become this obsessive, cooing presence that crowds out Natalia’s sense of self. They are supposed to represent something tender, maybe even romantic. Instead, they just become suffocating. When Natalia shakes the eggs, destroying the fragile lives inside before they can hatch, it’s one of the few moments where she exerts control. It’s violent, yes, but also desperate. And yet, one egg survives… one fragile life pushed through despite her attempt to end it, just like how Natalia herself survives even after imagining the unthinkable. How poetic! 

Sidenote: I can’t be the only one who thought that it probably would have been pretty nice for them to have had some pigeons when they were literally starving to death? Not to blame Natalia for them for going hungry or anything but… karma, right? 

Sidenote #2: This is how I like to imagine Natalia looking at Quimet bringing home more pigeons:

Either way, this was an interesting read. I won’t lie and say that I breezed through it and enjoyed it, but I think it’s important to see how works like this can highlight the devastating implications of political and economic turmoil and how literature can explore sides of the story that we wouldn’t have otherwise been exposed to. Won’t be re-reading, but it sure has given me a lot to think about!