We talked about people being normal and what normal meant in one of our classes and I go back to that because for almost 3/4 of the book the only normal person was Mateu and maybe Cintet. Mateu was a man that was very much in love with his wife and daughter. He was a man that missed them and stayed friends with his wife to raise their daughter together. There was no romantic love for Natalia which was nice to read.
The boy, Antonio, was a monster as a child and it is interesting in reading how the parents would react. Also who the freak keeps a tapeworm in a jar. I was honestly surprised that the girl, Rita, didn’t die because of her brother.
Now Quimet, I could go on and on about him being a horrible husband. He was abusive. We are only shown one instance of physical abuse (iirc) but that paragraph ends with “From then on he played that joke a lot” (44) making it known that it happened many times after that. He would also take Natalia on a motorcycle when she was clearly afraid of riding it. ALSO he did even call her Natalia, he called her Colometa!
The whole thing with saying “Poor Maria” (46) and talking about Maria seeing the motorcycle was just plain weird. If he had a dead wife or something he should have told Natalia that and not had her think that she can’t do things to Maria’s standards.
Now going to the book itself, Mercè Rodoreda’s The Time of the Doves starts off a little slow. It took my a while to get into it. It is also interesting how it isn’t split into chapters. You can tell when a new one starts because of formatting, but it is not split obviously. I did like the writing style. The whole book and a sort of sadness layered over it that stayed even during the happy/celebratory scenes.
The doves were a major part of the book for good reason, but main thing that they symbolized for me (without going super deep into it) was their relation to their wealth and how they are getting along, but also Natalia’s mental health. With the war starting and them becoming poorer, the doves also are hit and do not have enough to eat. Many of the doves leave, like the some citizens of Natalia’s city and other refugees that were fleeing the war. The doves also showed the “second shift” that women have (the doves might actually make it a third shift) to do once they get home from work. Women work, then come home to take care of the kids and the housework, while the men do not.
My discussion question is: Do you think that Natalia was only going to kill her children or herself as well? Do you think she would have been able to go through with it if Antonio Sr. hadn’t called her back to the shop?