Although I made the choice of choosing to read Carmen Laforet’s Nada over Alberto Moravia’s Agostino weeks ago, I began to question whether I made the right decision when I saw the amount of blogs written on Moravia’s novel instead of Laforet’s.

What drew me to read this book initially was the description that the professor gave. The “Which texts” page on the course website mentioned how we might relate to the protagonist since she is also a university student. Since this book was published in 1945, I was curious to find out whether the protagonist’s experiences would still be relevant today.Nevertheless, I continued to read Nada and was not disappointed at all!

To start, although it was interesting to follow the story of a young woman in university, I was quickly more intrigued by the gothic and mystery tone of this book. For instance, on just the fifth page, the protagonist, Andrea, goes from describing her stay at Barcelona to be an “exciting adventure” to a “nightmare” (5).

Since I have a tendency to visualize books while I’m reading them, many of the passages in this text also set a haunting tone and image in my head. For instance,  Andrea’s first impression of how the home “seemed like a witches’ house” and how her bed “resembled a coffin” leads me to imagine the apartment to be similar to a haunted house (8) (9). In addition, with descriptions such as Juan having a “face full of hollows, like a skull in the light” and Andrea’s aunts being “ghostly women”, I could also imagined them to resemble characters from a Tim Burton movie (6).

Also, I noticed how many of the chapters left on a cliffhanger of some sorts that made the story feel engaging and exciting to read. This was a shift from many of the other books, because there was an actual narrative structure to follow through. Furthermore, after every chapter, the reader is able to learn a little bit more about every character and what their intentions are. One character that I was particularly intrigued about was Román. Since the beginning of the book, there was a lot of mystery revolving around him and I was confused about what his intentions were.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book and here are some questions for the class:

Do you think the comparison of the characters and tone to a Tim Burton movie is valid? Also, for those who read Agostino, I’m curious to know why you decided to choose that book instead!