Xavier Bosch's Nosaltres dos: A Review

Xavier Bosch, Nosaltres dos (Barcelona: Columna, 2017). 566 pages.

What to make of the many people we meet throughout our lifetime? Some stay close for years, even decades; others remain close for shorter periods of time, while others simply vanish as quickly as they became part of your inner circle, albeit briefly. Yet as you approach the twilight years, it should be a good idea to look back (not in anger, though) and assess.

But the question remains: is it really that good an idea? Who knows? This is a matter which is probably easier to deal with in fiction than in real life, don’t you think?

‘The two of us’: the title alludes to are Kim and Laura, who meet at university when they have to complete a joint assignment on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It is the 1980s, but theirs is a friendship that grows through the months and years, and grows stronger, too.

“In the late afternoon sun, the lake was a millpond. A bluish calm mirror reflecting every reddish hue of the day that was hiding behind the mountains. Slowly, the night was shadowing the road to Mieres, the Estunes, the Rocacorba summit or Xicu Cabanyes’ Forest of Erotic Sculptures. Perhaps Kim would have liked to see the gigantic cocks at Can Ginebreda? But it was getting dark, and without any daylight the temperature at the Russian fishing house was coming down severely. Laura noticed she was getting a split lip. A while before Kim had wrapped around his neck, as if not meaning to, the blue scarf Laura had taken off so she could zip her leather jacket. But neither of them was in a hurry. Due to the last bits of light, where the water became darker, they thought they could glimpse drops of mercury.” (p. 57, my translation) Photograph by JosepBC.

Kim is the third son of a Barcelona hotel owner, something of an upper-middle class dynasty, the Rafels. His life has been more or less decided for him: complete a degree, join the management team at the hotel and enjoy the perks of belonging to the wealthy. Laura is from Banyoles, her family is not as well-off as Kim’s, but what she lacks in privilege she makes up for with her efforts, intelligence and perseverance.

The Russian-looking fishing house on Lake Banyoles. Photograph by Enfo.

One way or another, life always hits us with heavy blows. In Kim’s case, he wakes up hungover on the day he was supposed to accompany Alex, his eldest brother, to Ibiza in the family boat. Roger, son number two, takes his place. On the way to the island, the boat rams into a half-submerged shipping container. They both perish.

After graduating, Kim and Laura find their own ways. Laura meets a much older English academic, falls for his charm and chooses the peace he irradiates. She goes to live with him England. Soon she specialises in conference interpreting and builds a reputation. After three years or so, she receives a big bunch of flowers from Eric, a much younger man, the manager of a rock band, who has offered her a full-time position. Not much later, she moves in with him.

During those years, Kim has remained in Barcelona, has married Miriam. He still has his fun, plays tennis with his mates and drives his sports car around. He has stayed in touch with Laura via email or the occasional phone call. When she finds out Eric has AIDS and realises she’s been living through a daily Russian roulette with him and the band, she asks Kim for help. The two friends meet in London. Laura decides to return to Barcelona, but Miriam notices there could be something other than friendship. Eventually, and thanks to some not completely explained intervention from Kim, Laura is offered a job in Australia.

“Lakes give cities some respite. The peace of the Serpentine was being shattered only by the clatter of cutlery and trays, the polite rustle of those who were queuing while waiting for the second course – hot stew, grilled steak or some fish unbeknownst to Kim – and the feeble voice of the tanned cashier. No sooner had the rain stopped than two young men from the cleaning services company, easily identifiable because of their green overalls, started drying up the stone benches and tables. Sun-seeking people, both tourists and locals, came out to drink their coffees by the water. The ducks quacked incessantly, perhaps disoriented by the sudden change in the weather. Kim threw away the umbrella, which had already served its purpose, grabbed the apple pie his sweet-toothed father liked so much and, grabbing his suitcase with his other hand went outside to eat it. To take in the cool November air and wait for Laura. Whatever the problem she might have, he was very much looking forward to seeing her. Whatever it was that was the matter with her, and he was hoping it was nothing too serious, he was kind of anxious to meet her again… He felt someone standing behind him was grabbing him by the shoulder.” (p. 297) The Serpentine at Hyde Park. Photograph by Tristan Surtel. 

The story then jumps back to 2016, where the book starts with the party to celebrate that Kim turns 50. Laura has been invited, too. She flies all the way back for the occasion. Kim and Miriam are already divorced. What will happen when the two friends see each other again, after so many years?

Nosaltres dos mostly entertains. There is nothing more to the story than the personal: Bosch does not contextualise the plot or his characters in terms of socio-political issues. If anything, it is just the hotel business and its ups and downs before and after Barcelona becoming the host city for the Olympic Games in 1992. And that’s about it. The language is informal, the plot has few uncalled-for twists and the gross interference from the Rome-based side of the Rafels family adds some mystery and spice to what is, largely speaking, a romance.

In my view, Bosch relies on adopting Kim’s narrative point of view much too heavily. While there may be some depth to his character, this is not the case with Laura. Her side of the story hardly ever comes across as fully convincing.

While this is a piece of fiction, there is however one factual error that I found quite amusing, given that I have lived in Canberra for over a decade. There has never been a Faculty of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Canberra. As a matter of fact, UC no longer  hosts a School of Languages. The Spanish Language Department, for which I was a tutor for one rather forgettable year, was wrecked by its inept managers and other scandalous matters, which are absolutely irrelevant here.

A novel about friendship, love and the passage of time. They say time heals all wounds, and I completely disagree. The proverb is hardly accurate. It is however true that time does not kill off true friendships. Ever.

Vicent Usó's Les veus i la boira: A Review

Vicent Usó, Les veus i la boira (Alzira: Bromera, 2015). 352 pages.

The group of islets known as Les Columbretes between the eastern Valencian coast and the Balearic Islands, together with the beachside town of Peníscola, are the two main settings for this enticing novel by Vicent Usó. The title [The Voices and the Mist] is not only a veiled reference to the novel’s structure but also to the way dreadful stories of treason and murder are often hidden behind the mists of time, with only human voices being able, sooner or later, to bring them back to us in the present.

Panoramic view of the Columbretes. Photograph by JavierValencia2005.

Young journalist Mateu Sequeral, comes across a family mystery going back to the decades after the Spanish Civil War. In 1972 his father, Bernat Sequeral, found to his astonishment that the coffin where he had always thought contained his mother’s remains was empty. How was this possible? Who had been lying to him for so many years?

Unheeding many warnings and even threats, Mateu continues to investigate. There are many more secrets just waiting to be upturned like stones, the ugly faces of meanness, hatred and crime revealed. The journalist compiles a wide range of  testimonies, some of them as interviews, others as unsent or indeed mailed letters, yet also manuscripts and newspaper clippings. The mix is at times dizzying and mystifying, as Usó chooses to intermingle them without apparently any rhyme or reason. But a reason there is indeed.

"Have you heard about the legendary treasure? Every sailor and fisherman would talk about it in those days. There were those who would joke about it, but some did take it very seriously and believed it and even dreamt of finding it. Corball was one of the latter. When he was ashore he would scrutinise the maps of the island and would look up in ancient books and talk to all sorts of people. He always carried a folder replete with papers and, as soon as he was able, he would jump in a rowboat and started exploring the many caves he could find. It didn't matter to him whether they were on the big island or Ferrera islet or Foradada. He even went to Carallot and explored it. He had explored all of those caves. Each and every one of them. But he never found anything at all." (p. 124, my translation).
The Lighthouse on Illa Grossa. Photograph by JavierValencia2005.

Usó has created a jigsaw puzzle with many details and information. This might be somewhat demanding for a less discerning reader, but as the novel keeps piling up detail upon detail and anecdote upon anecdote, the plot keeps you intrigued, wanting to know more and, particularly, why.

What at first sight might look like a maze is not. Usó worked on this novel for close to ten years; the order in which every chapter and fragment has been set is clearly deliberate. Every step of the way, even when it takes you back to the 1930s and the dark days of the Civil War and the disgraceful attack on the POUM (so aptly narrated by Orwell in Homage to Catalonia), is moving you forward, towards an ending, even though not a one hundred percent closed one.

Another captivating aspect of the book lies in the wealth of voices it displays. Usó endows each of his characters with regional or local idioms and sayings. The many dialects and idiolects of the Catalan language are on show, and the reader is thankful for it. The only objection that could be raised has to do with the newspaper clippings, which despite being from the Francoist era, are written in Catalan. This certainly weakens the verisimilitude of the story: no newspaper in 1962 would have been allowed to be published in Catalan. Some progress has been made, no doubt, since then.

Les veus i la boira includes some hair-raising episodes, like the summary executions carried out by the Falangists when they entered Peníscola, or the ghastly reprisals against family members of their enemies.

"... when Franco's troops broke the Republican lines and reached the seaside, the rebellious army units entered Peníscola accompanied by Falangist squads, their eyes burning with hatred. Among them was Jaume Sequeral. The first thing they did was gather all of us who had shown support, as they said, for defending the Republic. They put us all in the municipal jail, and a few days later they tried us all. All of us together. The charges were simply based on the kind of rhetoric full of platitudes: in their view, it had been us who were seditious, traitors, criminals. We were to blame for all the calamities in the world. They did not need evidence or testimonies. A simple report that nobody would bother to verify was enough, if their sources suited them. We were not allowed to defend ourselves.What use would it have been? From the very first moment it became clear to me they did not seek justice but revenge. An exemplary punishment that would make everybody aware of what the new rules were: complete submission to their absolute power. The sort of power that has always been there." (p. 114, my translation). A view of Peníscola: photograph by Gordito1869.

The stakes are high when a novelist risks so much by adopting a multi-voice approach to the storytelling. Yet with Usó, it is a win-win scenario. Not only does the narrative progress at a very reasonable pace, keeping the reader engrossed in the story; the constant shift between dialects, idiolects and points of view makes for a vibrant and entertaining novel. The characters come alive through their peculiar idioms and sayings. For example, Colauet, the old seaman who reminisces about his love for teenager Caterina Montaner while recounting the tobacco smuggling operations in the archipelago.

This is a good, aptly told and competently constructed story, a rare find. Given its many linguistic nuances and the various dialectal varieties it offers, it is definitely a great challenge for a potential translation into any language, too. Quite commendable.

Joan-Carles Martí i Casanova's Els països del tallamar: A Review

Joan-Carles Martí i Casanova, Els països del tallamar (Palma: Documenta Balear, 2013). 323 pages.

Pa, as my father-in-law was known to my children, was born in Fairfield, in the western suburbs of Sydney, four years before the second world war started. Fairfield is, coincidentally, the place where Joan-Carles Martí, the author of this book inspired in very real events, ended up in the early 1970s, in the company of his immigrant family. They spent barely five years in Australia, but it was long enough to leave an indelible mark in young Martí.

Fairfield Station in south western Sydney. Many Spanish-speaking migrants lived there and pronounced the name of the suburb as "Far-field". Photograph by J Bar.

Els països del tallamar, which could arguably translate as The countries overseas, is not your average novel about migration, even though one of its main subjects is migration. To begin with, there is no first-person narrator, which would be expected for a narrative on the migration experience. There is of course an omniscient narrator, but the story follows the whims and travels of the character in possession of a black-and-red opal. This is Gabre, whose mission is to render an account of the lives of three generations, between the end of the 19^th century and the first decade of the one we’re currently in.

One of the strangest things about this book is the choice of names for all the family members. They’re all birds: there’s the parents, Baldrigot (the Great Shearwater) and Calàndria (the Lark), and Gabre’s siblings, Coloma Alba (the White Dove), Damisela Grua (the Damsel Crane), Aguiló Auri (the Golden Eaglet) and Gavina Vori (the Ivory Seagull). Maybe Martí wished to disguise the names of his relatives, or perhaps it is mere artifice, but the strategy feels a little forced, somewhat contrived. Although the overall effect may have been engineered, it does not harm the narrative at all. As I said, it feels somewhat odd.

The other big issue in Els països del tallamar is, perhaps surprisingly, language. Language defines us inasmuch as it is the result of asking ourselves the eternally existential question, “Who am I?”. There is a twofold insight into language in the novel. On the one hand, the Martí family was the upshot of a migratory mix within Spain in the late 19^th century; the  descendants are part of the big post-war migration to Europe. Baldrigot and Calàndria move to Marseille, the Occitanian part of southern France. So we have an unmistakable linguistic connection, as the historical links between Occitan and Catalan are evident.

But on the other hand Martí wants to direct our attention to the fact of language as the tool the migrant needs to truly master in order to survive wherever he/she goes. Unless you communicate, you will not succeed. This, presumably, is the author’s experience: Martí is a reputable translator and interpreter, and has made his living through the ability to use languages, in plural. Like yours truly. Here’s a poignant paragraph on the migrant experience, in his case a fifth generation migrant: “For the migrant, the future takes ages to come. Quite often, it never comes, even though at the end of the day everything comes and goes. Time does not exist because we can fly over a continuous line where there is neither past nor present nor future. Only when it becomes far too late does every generation realise they haven’t achieved everything they could have achieved: that’s their fate. All things considered, the children of migrants are often, at birth, sentenced to becoming migrants again, just like their parents, their grandparents and great-grandparents. That steep road of return to the mythical country they have so often heard about at home begins the moment their parents leave. Going back is a much crueller migration. The children of their parents’ longing never quite knows where they belong. Nowhere do the natives ever quite consider them their own or their equals, and even those who leave for a few years return as hybrids, scarred by the fire of longed for lands.” (p. 46, my translation) The notion that the return to the place of origin can be “a much crueller migration” is at once interesting and troubling, and it should be further explored. Consider the case of the numerous young men and women who have been expelled back to their parents’ countries from the USA, sometimes without any basic knowledge of the language.

“The immigrants were astonished to see a military camp, copied from a photograph taken during a war that had occurred a generation before. No one had in any way imagined anything like this. In fact, many had mixed up ‘Hostel’ with the word ‘Hotel’. Given its semicircular shape, made from corrugated iron sheets, the Nissen Hut had been designed during the First World War so it would divert bursts of shrapnel and bombs, and for that very reason it was the perfect shelter close to the battlefield.” (p. 242, my translation). Un exemple reconvertit de Barraca Nissen a Leeton (NSW). Fotografia de Bidgee.

But back to Marseille. The couple have four children, and after a few years in France the opportunity to go to Australia is there for them to take. From London they fly the kangaroo route (as it was known in those days because of the many refuel stops that were needed before reaching Australia). They are placed in a migrant hostel and face the usual difficulties and hardships migrants faced in those days. How things have changed in the 21^st century!

While the years in Marseille make up most of the first two parts of the novel, their five years in Sydney constitute the most remarkable part. In the second, Martí imagines the possible lives the characters may have lived in ancient times across the globe. Personally, I do not believe in reincarnation or previous lives or stuff like that, and so this section is, in my opinion, gratuitous and makes what is a good story needlessly longer.

In Fairfield, the family go through the migrant experience of the 1970s. They are taken to the migrant hostels where the most basic needs are taken care of, but that’s about it. While the parents and the eldest son take jobs wherever they may happen to be offered, the children go to school and have to learn English from scratch. Their lives are shaped by the Great Return Plan to the Promised Land of origin, in their case Elx, the big industrial city south of Alacant.

Torrades amb mantega i Vegemite. L'esmorzar australià més popular. A la majoria dels emigrants no els agrada gens. Fotografia de Tristanb.

There would be an irreparable loss after their return to Elx, the death of Coloma Alba. Those who are free from such grief and sadness can count themselves lucky indeed. Els països del tallamar is an extremely valuable contribution to the account of migration from Franco’s Spain to other lands and places. It would have benefitted from a stricter editor’s hand, in my view. The question remains: will there be any narratives from the current generation of Catalan-language youth who have been forced to migrate? Let’s hope so.

Pep Puig's La vida sense la Sara Amat: A Review

Pep Puig, La vida sense la Sara Amat (Barcelona: Proa, 2016). 295 pages.

Josep is 12 years old, and he’s been spending the long summer holidays at his grandparents’ house in a Catalan village called Ullastrell. It’s early September 1981; he and his gang of friends (la colla) are playing hide-and-seek at night time when one of them, Sara, 13, suddenly disappears. Where has she gone? What has happened? Has she been abducted? Or is she fleeing home?

Ullastrell: it's s big small world. Photo by Pere López. 

A search party is quickly organised, with no success. In the meantime, Josep has gone back to his room, where he discovers Sara, who is neither pretty nor ugly. In fact, Josep fancies Sara a fair bit, and when she asks him to keep mum about her whereabouts, he easily acquiesces.

The house is a big one, the typical two-floor building with long corridors and a shop at the front. Josep’s grandfather died a couple of years before, so his widow appreciates her grandson’s company. What follows is a tender love story and a literary game between reality and fiction. Quite incredibly, Sara gets to stay at Josep’s room for longer than a week. He gets her three meals a day, she gets to use the bathroom and even the shower every now and then; she hides beneath the big bed whenever visitors approach.

The first edition of War and Peace.

So what does she do with her time when Josep is not in the room? She reads Tolstoy’s War and Peace. We learn that Sara is thought of as ‘a little weird’ by most villagers. In fact, she’s a gifted and talented teenager, who should have been sent to a first-rate school by her parents. Nonconformist and a little rebellious, she hates the village and wants to leave and decide for herself what her life will be like.

“Of all of us, Sara was the only one who was different. The rest of us were all alike, except for her, who was different. Already as a little child. I daresay Sara’s difference essentially lay in her intelligence, not so much her rebellious instinct. I mean, if she was rebellious, it was precisely because she was far more intelligent than all of us. It must have been very hard for her to adapt to a village full of idiots, I mean; and even though I was not from the village, I count myself as one of them. And the older she got, the worst it became. She kept coming out to play with us, but it was almost against her will, as if by the force of habit of so many years doing so, but you could already see that one day she would stop coming and would leave us alone for good. At least, I did; and I particularly see it now, remembering her when she was nearing her thirteen years of age, sitting on the green wooden bench under the mulberry tree, sullenly looking towards the far end of the street, as if she were already pondering the way to flee.And it was certainly what she was doing: pondering the way to become a fugitive from the village.” (p. 15-16, my translation)

La vida sense la Sara Amat [Life without Sara Amat] is an assured and sensitive narrative on the challenges and fears any teenager encounters. Told by an adult Josep with an autobiographical technique, the story makes the young kid face the issues that appear while growing up and reaching maturity. Puig succeeds in inviting the reader to understand which are the contradictory aspects of the adult world that completely puzzle and baffle young Josep: love and sexuality, of course, but also hypocrisy, loyalty and secrecy.

Leaving aside its minor issues of plausibility, Pep Puig achieves a rare sensitivity in this novel: young Josep is a timid boy, hesitant and apprehensive about the trials life will bring him to, yet the adult narrator (how dissimilar he can be from the author is probably a tricky question) creates a deftly balanced story. Just as Josep discovers something about himself by staring at his reflection in the mirror, La vida sense la Sara Amat is an invitation for the reader to doublecheck their firmest notions about fiction and memory. Let’s play hide-and-seek once again.

La vida sense la Sara Amat was awarded the Sant Jordi Prize for fiction in 2015. The first twenty-odd pages are available for download here.

[Added on 15 Feb 2020] The novel has been made into a movie. Here's the trailer:

Jordi Coca's En caure la tarda: A Review

Jordi Coca, En caure la tarda (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 2011). 222 pages.

Who is Miquel Gironès, and what does he do on Earth? Unless the two foregoing questions raise a modicum of curiosity in you, read no more.

For Gironès, in terms that everyone understands almost immediately, is basically a loser. A sixty-odd-year-old, grossly overweight Catalan businessman, who is bored to death with both himself and the life he leads. Quite possibly, a Fascist, too.

Gironès has arrived home from yet another week of work. Barcelona has been drenched with rain for the last few hours, so his shoes, socks and trousers are soaked and changing into dry clothes has become such a drag for him, it almost makes you feel sorry for him.

Except that it does not. Not then, not ever. And what’s more, a perverse reader might even rejoice when Gironès finds he has left the car lights on and has to yet again walk in the blasted downpour to turn it off. Off you go, sodden sod!

Through over 200 pages Coca provides a detailed account of Mr Gironès’s remarkably mediocre life. The only son of a doctor and his unexceptional wife, Miquel never stood out either as a student or as a sportsman. He’s a man of his times: insecure, uneducated, full of racist and misogynistic prejudices, quickly approaching a likely painful death. As soon as he gets home, he turns on the tele. Rather than cooking himself a healthy dinner he prefers to drink a can of beer and try and deceive his stomach with a tiny tub of yoghurt.

The bulk of the narrative is made up of his interior monologues, his twisted thoughts on the past. And what sort of a past can such a mediocrity have? This is where En caure la tarda certainly gains traction. We learn that Gironès did have a wife, Ester, who kind of adored him at the beginning. However, things soon started changing. Gironès fancied Ester’s sister, Agnès, and she kind of obliged. Somehow his wife found out, they were arguing while driving somewhere and an accident happened. That was 30 years ago. Ester died at the scene. Agnès stayed around for a while until her conscience dictated she had to kick him out of her life.

For over thirty years Gironès has been living a lie, but he feels little remorse over this. If anything characterises him, it’s his laziness, his unwillingness to make any effort at all to change things for himself. Jordi Coca’s skilful depiction of Gironès renders him as a ridiculously pitiful, overindulgent and spineless wimp.

Yes, ‘cause the way I go about my life, everyone’s telling you stories. Nonsense, gossip, most of it in any case spares you the need to read. There's no need to read anything. News flies past so fast. Nowadays everyone’s up to date with everything through everyone else’s comments. Culture, which Agnès liked so very much, has turned into shit. She liked to show off about culture. Let all poets kill themselves! The vast majority of paintings in the most prestigious museums are completely worthless. Straight away Gironès would admit to himself that he enjoyed this kind of verbal terrorism.

"Yes, because I harm nobody, no one starves because of what I think. And here, in the bathroom, in this tiny space, seeing my massive face in the fogged-up mirror, is where I best articulate my brilliant ideas on the world. If I was able to press the little button that would make everything blow up, would I do it? If for a moment I was God and I had the possibility of erasing the whole of creation itself, life and everything that exists, those galaxies that are light years away, what we can see and what we cannot, if I could restore the void, would I? Yes, I think so, boooommm!!!! My image would vanish from the mirror, the street would disappear, to hell with the migrants and all those annoying people, politicians and bankers being blown to pieces, doctors painfully disintegrating, planets and stars exploding just like soap bubbles, a thorough clean-up, leaving just the emptiness, the silence…” (p. 217, my translation) Fotografía: Traquair

The novel alternates between first and third-person narration, which makes the story flow more smoothly than if a first-person only approach had been used. Even so, many ideas and episodes of Gironès’s life are repeated all too often, which slows down the minimum plot there is.

Many questions may nevertheless arise for a conscientious reader. Did Jordi Coca have in mind any actual person known to him when creating Miquel Gironès? How much of a Gironès does each of us have? And since it is out of the question for us readers to feel pity for him, should we really recommend En caure la tarda?

While I cannot answer the first two, I would not hesitate to mention Jordi Coca’s book to anyone who enjoys serious literature and can keep a safe, sane distance between themselves and the protagonists of fiction.

Muriel Villanueva's Motril 86: A Review

Muriel Villanueva, Motril 86 (Barcelona: Proa, 2013). 286 pages.

In what is yet another dilatory strategy from a desperate(ly) conservative government, this week the Turnbull-“led” government (the quotation marks stand for sarcasm) decided to prevent a conscience vote in Parliament and waste many millions of taxpayer money (which should be directed towards people who are in dire need of assistance) on a postal plebiscite on same-sex marriage, the constitutionality of which will need to be determined by the High Court. As ever, Australia is dragged back into the 20^th century. It’s sickening.

Our friends S. and M. have been in a solidly steady relationship for over 20 years. They are, for all intents and purposes, a married couple – they are the proud mothers of a gorgeous teenager, A. Yet intransigent, narrow-minded bigots of the religious persuasion do not want to allow them to legalise their marriage on an equal footing as heterosexual partners. There are many thousands of Australian couples who share in their injustice.

Our kids used to think A. was incredibly lucky to have two mums. These days, the boys irately remonstrate against the backward, fundamentalist stance of the parties in government. If only Australian teenagers were granted the right to vote! How quickly the country might change for good!

My reader may be wondering what all of the above may have to do with the book under review. The answer is easy: everything. Motril 86 is a novel about a 10-year-old girl with two mums. It is 1986, and Spain has managed to survive yet another Fascist coup. After 40 years of social and political repression, there was among the young a hunger for many, various freedoms. Among them, sexual freedom.

Mar, the young girl and alter ego for Valencia-born Villanueva, travels to a small coastal village near Motril (Almeria) with Paula, her biological mother’s partner. She is to spend a week there. And what a week it will end up being: Mar will get to know the most intimate secrets of Paula’s friends and flatmates, she will have vital experiences unknown to her until then, and will learn more about herself than in the ten years she has lived so far.

A view of Torrenueva beach. Photograph by Jorgechp

The plot deals with how Mar engages with Paula and tries to make sense of her ‘second’ mother during the trip and the short stay in the Andalusian village. The dialogues are crisp and perspicacious; the characters are powerfully drawn; the trip narrative is replete with amusing anecdotes Spanish readers of my generation will recognise and identify with instantly. For instance, Flores, the macho hitchhiker who in the end manages to make even Paula laugh, is a plausible character who adds spice to the plot.

There are two narrative voices here, though. First and foremost, there is 10-year-old Mar, through whose fresh, naïve worldview we read the story. But there is also 35-year-old Mar/Muriel Villanueva the writer, who reflects on the difficulties of the writing process and discusses the trustworthiness of her memories with her two mothers twenty-five years later. Of course, such memories are unreliable – that is why we write fiction, don’t we? To make unreliable memories more dependable? Motril 86 delves therefore into the autofiction genre, and it does so quite successfully.

There are occasionally some weaker parts. Personally, I disliked the inclusion of the Facebook comments and queries, which hardly add anything to the story. There are also far too many musical references, as if Villanueva had been planting the seeds of a soundtrack for a movie to be made down the track. On the other hand, it is undeniable that music was a very significant part of our lives back then.

Els Pets was one of the bands Mar would listen to on her radio-cassette. Bon dia! (Good morning!)

Villanueva shows skill in creating Mar’s narrative voice: a wryly ironic young girl whose view of the world would have been very different from other children of her age. The smooth mix of Spanish and the two regional varieties of Catalan in the dialogues is also quite an achievement.

And now, can we please bring Australia into the 21^st century for good? Pretty please!?

Lluís-Anton Baulenas´ Quan arribi el pirata i se m´emporti: A Review

Lluís-Anton Baulenas, Quan arribi el pirata i se m'emporti (Barcelona: RBA, 2015). 429 pages.

20^th-century Spain allowed many an unsavoury character to make progress in life; Francoism was the ideal socio-political system for ruthless and callous non-entities to make their fortunes through dodgy deals, exerting their influence way beyond what the normal extent of their actual abilities and competencies should have reached. One of these people could have easily been Miquel-Deogràcies Gambús, introduced to us readers as ‘the Ogre’. The Ogre’s middle name (“thanks be to God”) is of course a finely sarcastic detail from Baulenas.

At 96, Gambús’ CV is one to be dubiously proud of: a double murderer before becoming of age (a young local shepherd and his own grandmother are his first two victims), he quickly profited from the Civil War and the Francoist regime by doing whatever it took to achieve his ends. Many years later he is the owner and President of a big international company called Prospective Business. He has everything money can buy, yet everything is never enough.

One thing he cannot have is eternal life, though. His end is nigh, as they say, and he wishes to keep his secret “treasure” in safe hands. His treasure is a little cave with the most amazing rupestrian paintings ever discovered, above which Gambús has built his mansion, appropriately named La Fortuna. The local shepherd was the first person to pay for this secret with his life, but a few more end up losing their lives throughout the years, his first wife included.

Gambús knows not what scruples are, nothing has ever stopped him, or will ever stop him for that matter. Not even his two sons, very wealthy businessmen who live in London and New York respectively, have ever been allowed to see the paintings. So why does Gambús all of a sudden summon fifty-something-year-old gay amateur photographer and Raval-based nurse Jesús Carducci to his mansion, offering him huge sums of money to photograph the paintings?

A Raval street in broad daylight. Photograph by Jeny.

Quan arribi el pirata i se m’emporti, loosely translatable as ‘When the pirate comes and takes me away’, is narrated in two parallel plotlines that eventually meet and clash at La Fortuna. While the story of Gambús’ life since his birth in 1909 to the megalomaniac project he has devised in order to make his legacy a long-lasting one is certainly an attractive one, the storyline around Carducci’s flirts with various men and his walks around the Barri del Raval are less so. The former is narrated in the third person (we later learn Carducci is the narrator), while Carducci’s adventures are a first-person narrative.

The novel, however, takes a few too many chapters to really engage the reader: there are a few too many diversions, as well as an excess of probably irrelevant details. Baulenas indulges in rather verbose descriptions where, at least in my opinion as a reader, the editor should have used the old red pen.

The Ogre’s machinations are indeed the driving force in this quirky yet at times captivating story. Carducci becomes a puppet whose strings Gambús pulls at will. Which is not too difficult a task for someone like Gambús, of course, who is known to have flown across the world to propose to his would-be second wife, French prostitute Martine, in extremely convincing terms: he more or less says, “I came here to either marry you or kill you. Choose what it will be.” Like the slogan in those T-shirts many people used to wear all over the planet not that long ago, Marta Gambús, as she will be known eventually, will choose life. A life sentence of sorts indeed.

Quan arribi el pirata i se m’emporti deals quite aptly with the allure of power and how it corrupts everyone who comes near those who exert it. Two very different worlds are confronted with each other: the world of wealth and limitless influence versus the microcosm of El Raval, the old Barcelona barrio where crime, crudity and hardship dominate people’s lives.

An old city gets a facelift - AirBnB does the rest. Photograph by Alain Rouiller.   

Unlike El nas de Mussolini, the only other Baulenas book I have read so far (a review in Spanish is available here), Quan arribi el pirata… is not as masterfully paced or skilfully structured. Still, it’s entertaining enough. 

Yet apart from the slow start to the story proper, the ending is a little long-winded, too. And to compound things, Baulenas adds an 18-page epilogue, situated three years later in 2009. Why a 400-page story would require such a lengthy epilogue is something that escapes me. Not every character needs to have their life sorted out and explained at length in a novel, methinks.