Josep Bertomeu Moll's Capvespre: A Review

Josep Bertomeu Moll, Capvespre (Gandia: Lletra Impresa, 2016). 224 pages.

I was a rather naïve 11-year-old boy when Fascist dictator Franco died, yet I do have a few memories of the difficult years before his death, and particularly the profound changes that occurred in the years that followed. It could very well be argued that more than 40 years later, those political changes have turned out to be rather cosmetic in their nature. Spain has basically retained the political status quo resulting from the military coup in 1936, the ensuing Civil War and forty years of a dictatorial regime. It is a country where conservative elites and economic oligarchies exercise their unfettered power, where corruption unashamedly spreads to the top echelons of government. Unsurprisingly, though, a clear majority of voters continue to elect politicians whose decency is, to say the least, questionable. Go figure.

In those years, my home town, Valencia, was not the markedly touristic destination it seems to be today. Valencian life in the 1970s was rather different from the easy-going, festive city it is in 2016. Then there was fear in the streets, and news of the political repression elsewhere in the Spanish State would have been very discreetly commented on by people in the streets. One of my first memories associated with anything remotely political is of my paternal grandmother telling me not to speak our local language instead of Spanish when in public. I must have been about 5 or 6 years old.

This is the Valencia Capvespre (The Evening) is set in. Written in 1977, the author kept it hidden in a drawer for decades until Lletra Impresa, an enthusiastic publisher from Gandia, rescued the manuscript and took a gamble by printing it as their first volume in their fresh fiction collection. Unless there are more uncovered manuscripts of his, this might unfortunately turn out to be Bertomeu’s only published book, since he unexpectedly passed away just a couple of weeks ago.

A fragmentary narrative, Capvespre follows the lives of Lluís and Pilar, the two main characters, whose complicated, twisted, on-and-off relationship makes up the main plot of the novel. They are part of a wider circle of friends, university students who fight the regime hoping to achieve freedom, hoping to reach for their future, for their dreams at a time when Francoist repression had intensified its brutal force. Moreover, Bertomeu employs different narrative points of view, providing noteworthy contrasts between the various characters about the same events.

The terrible mishaps associated with mandatory military service, the patently injurious conditions for young females within what was a creepily Catholic society, the lively nights of jazz music and cheap booze in well-known bars of the different barrios of Valencia, the ground-breaking literature that was landing at Spanish bookshops in those years (Neruda, César Vallejo, Cortázar, Arguedas, García Márquez, Cabrera Infante, among others), the first sexual experiences of very young men and women, the extremely risky business of joining the then illegal Communist Party … these are some of the situations and circumstances narrated by Lluís, or explained through letters by Pilar, Jordi, Sergi. Bertomeu succeeds in contriving a 1977 narrative that feels way before his time, and is at times more ‘contemporary’ than some novels written in recent years, both in its circular structure and its utterly compelling style.

Non-conformism was an essential part of the philosophy of the young people at the time. They would not abide by a State that repressed and coerced them. Gathering in the streets and plazas of Valencia (which Bertomeu cleverly identifies by using the Francoist names they had until the late 1970s) to distribute radical pamphlets or marching in protest, the students regularly had to run away from riot police, or occasionally clashed with Fascist gangs at the Faculty.

For anyone arriving in Valencia by train, Plaza del Caudillo (wash your mouth, boy!) was an unavoidable passageway towards the bars in the older parts of the city. Today it is known as Plaça de l"Ajuntament.

In Capvespre, some of Lluís’s friends are arrested by Franco’s Secret Police and sent to jail, where they languish for months or even years, found guilty in trials run by ludicrous judges. Their crime? Wishing freedom for their peers and themselves.

Capvespre is a welcome and necessary reminder of the struggle for dignity a whole generation of Valencians engaged in. It should also help us to focus on the fact that 40 years later, younger generations of Valencians, let alone Spaniards, time and again see how their hopes and their dreams are smashed by inept governments that continue to underpin a decrepit, dishonest, fraudulent political system.

Apart from a few well-accomplished historical recreations such as Silvestre Vilaplana’s L’estany de foc, the city of Valencia had never really been the protagonist of a book. It is a pleasant surprise to see how the city comes alive in Bertomeu’s words, in his sharp-eyed descriptions. How unfortunate it is that Bertomeu is no longer alive to write a sequel to Capvespre.

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.

Jaume Cabré's Jo confesso: A Review

Jaume Cabré, Jo confesso (Barcelona: Proa, 2009). 1,005 pages.
It is becoming increasingly rare to come across good novels that exceed the 900-page mark. And even rarer that such novels may capture the reader’s imagination to such an extent as Jaume Cabré’s Jo confesso. This is undoubtedly an ambitious work, very much within the traditionally European line of the all-encompassing novel with a profoundly intellectual substratum.

The protagonist is Adrià Ardèvol, born into an upper-class Catalan family. He is the only child of a powerful antiques dealer, Félix Ardèvol. The father, a very strict figure, is bent on forcing Adrià to learn more than ten languages before he turns 18; as if that were not enough, the violin is also one of the extracurricular subjects the young Adrià will have to learn. How about some affection instead of so much knowledge? It is not to be: Adrià’s mother appears to have little interest in him, and shows hardly any warmth.

However, in the generally busy Ardèvols’ department of his childhood, Adrià finds nooks and corners where he can hide and listen, or as Hamlet would put it, be seeing unseen. Two action-hero toys of the 50s, Sheriff Carson and Black Eagle, the great Arapahoe Chief, accompany Adrià in his adventures and offer him advice on adult situations he does not comprehend and odd explanations of words he has never heard before.

The thing is, Adrià is something of a genius. He is enrolled in an elite religious school despite not having been baptised. It might sound like a paradox, but it makes perfect sense when we learn of the murky dealings Félix Ardèvol carried out during the Second World War, obtaining highly valuable objects from fleeing Holocaust victims first, and later from ex-Nazi officers. When need is so pressing, the basest offer sometimes will do.

Modest Urgell, Paisatge. 1655

Jo confesso, however, is much more than the above. It is also a long story about the nature of human evil, to which the young Adrià will be exposed very early in his life, when his father is murdered in mysterious circumstances. When Adrià grows up, he ends up being a distinguished professor who writes many a treatise on the problem of evil and the history of Western thought, among other subjects. But Cabré not only intersperses the narrative with lucid reflections on evil – he interweaves numerous narratives within the main plot led by Adrià. He deserves recognition for the fact that the mingling narrative lines do not confuse. It is after all a literary game Cabré plays with flair, although perhaps towards the end it might be a little overdone. Personally, I would have preferred a more open ending.

But Jo confesso is first and foremost the story of a man’s life. As Adrià grows up his world becomes populated with interesting characters. There is his friendship with professional violinist and would-be novelist Bernat, with whom he will share many a confidence. And there is the love story of his relationship with Jewish French artist Sara Voltes-Epstein. When they were still in their twenties, their two mothers conspire to break them apart, for reasons unknown to Adrià. It is only towards the end of the novel that it becomes clear that all of it was attributable to his father’s murky past. It is then that the novel’s first sentences make sense: “Until last night, while walking on the wet streets of Vallcarca, I had never understood that being born into that family of mine had been an unforgivable mistake. Suddenly I understood that I had always been alone, that I had never been able to rely upon my parents or upon a God to whom to ask to find solutions, even though as I grew up I had got accustomed to depend on imprecise beliefs and various readings for the burden of my thoughts and the responsibility of my actions.” (p. 13, my translation).

Confessions: Of how a musical instrument can awaken the most revolting passions in a human being.

One might think that all these plots and subplots should already be enough to construct a novel, but there’s more. There is one more piece in this puzzle: a genuine Storioni, made from the best wood available. The musical instrument becomes the centrepiece in Cabré’s journey through the centuries. The violin illustrates the point the author wants to make: how can a beautifully crafted instrument become an object of greed, malice, ill-will and bring about the death of so many? Since evil cannot reside in immaterial objects, where can it come from other than from within humans?

The Storioni, bought illicitly by Adrià’s father at the end of the Second World War, is obscurely linked with Sara’s family. It will become the bone of contention between the lovers, and ultimately it will be Bernat who finds out what happened to the one thing owned by Adrià he would have wished to own for good.

Cabré’s narrative is anything but conventional. Adrià’s story is written in the first and the third persons simultaneously, which provides for interesting angles. The novel is, therefore, not only a confession but also a self-assessment, where impartiality can only be an aspiration rather than a matter of fact. Towards the end, Bernat brings in another narrative voice allowing Cabré to tie up a few loose ends.

Jo confesso has been a huge editorial success beyond Catalonia, with translations published in fourteen languages. The English language edition was published by Arcadia Books and translated by Mara Faye Lethem. This grand novel provides a uniquely candid view of post-war Barcelona. An enriching, recommendable book.

Esperança Camps' Naufragi a la neu: A Review

Esperança Camps, Naufragi a la neu (Alzira: Bromera, 2011). 214 pages.

Fortunately for us readers, literature has endless possibilities for mirror games. When re-creating a creation produces reflections as varied and meaningful as those produced by Camps’ skilful narrative technique in this novel, Naufragi a la neu [literally, Wreck in the snow, although an alternative translation for the title could be Failure in the snow] the result can be delightfully playful.

Take Cristina, a youngish ex-drug addict who was rescued from the squalor and wretchedness her life had become by a charitable middle-aged woman, Teresa, in an ugly, tacky Mediterranean city on the east coast of the Iberian Peninsula no one can fail to recognise: my home town, Valencia. For reasons we are never completely told (Camps can also conveniently leave gaps where appropriate) Teresa saves Cristina from herself and probably from a certain and premature death, too. They become an item in more senses than one, and in time Teresa will give her young paramour an education. Cristina embraces literature while disengaging herself from all the vices and substances that used to be part of her bodily fluids, and just before their breakup she is invited to go to a writers’ retreat in the mountains.

The place has been snowed in: it should be an ideal situation for her fresh talent to flourish. The main character of the novel she is writing is Paco el Moix: an ex-convict, Paco survives in an all too familiar jungle of poverty and drug deals. The man has no scruples and will stop at nothing just to get a few euros with which to buy the next dose. When he the opportunity to do a big job come his way (a bank robbery in a small town), he does not hesitate to join two gun-toting Slavic thugs who treat him with absolute contempt. Will they succeed in getting away with the money?

It’s raining and I’m the woman in the wide-brimmed hat who is reviewing some papers and travels in Compartment C, Car 193 by Edward Hopper, who always painted loneliness. The thick, viscous unsought for loneliness that falls on your eyelids and corrodes your spirit. So many book covers have been illustrated with Hopper’s unreal atmospheres! I am who I want to be, and I know I’m fleeing. (p. 1, my translation) Image sourced from www.museumsyndicate.com/item.php?item=9758

If this were the whole plot of the novel, the book would have never seen the light of day. But because this is not what Naufragi a la neu is about, the reading is far more interesting than simply crime fiction. Camps presents the reader with three parallel texts. The first one is Cristina’s journal, where she confesses her fears, her aspirations, her miseries. The second one is the story Cristina is writing about Paco el Moix, which hardly ever goes for too long and is cleverly and frequently interrupted by a third voice, that produced by an anonymous narrator, who makes it first appearance in brackets, interrupting Cristina’s crime story.

Cristina’s stay at the mountain retreat eventually becomes some sort of mirror where she will need to confront the reality of her personal failure. Is Cristina the product of the narrator’s imagination? Or is the “narrator”, the intrusive narrative voice that nudges his/her way into the text the product of Cristina’s imagination (as Cristina appears to suggest in her journal)? Or are they all the result of yet another creator working at a higher level? Is it Teresa perhaps? Or Esperança Camps? We will never know because we are never told.

The metaliterary game played by Camps is remarkably thought-provoking. Towards the end of the robbery story, Cristina shows pity for Paco el Moix, whom she would have liked to kill in her fiction since she could not do so in real life. Was the narrator’s influence on this narratological choice determined by his/her affection for Cristina? Do these decisions mirror each other?

A story within a story is given an even wider narrative framework through the disruptive intervention of the anonymous narrator: “(this is not the way, I know, I’ve got no excuse to barge into the text Cristina’s writing, I’ve got no reason to do so, it’s one of the basic rules of the profession: our presence in the novel must not be noticed, but since I’ve already breached the precept of invisibility so many times, one more will hardly matter; I’ll make the most of the darkness in this room now that she’s gone down to supper and has left her laptop on, it looks like she intends to keep on writing when she comes back upstairs, that’s a good sign; oh, how I hate waltz! This one I can hear now, too, this one by Hans Christian Lumbye, so fat, with an insufferable moustache, the music he wrote seems to me too slimy… I’m going around in circles, I’m moving the cursor up and down because I know what I’m about to write is reckless, because I know I can’t sneak into Cristina’s novel to say that, despite my initial reticence, I like this woman, there, I’ve said it, I like Cristina, head over heels, there, it’s written, it makes me happy to hear her by my side, adjusting the pace of our thoughts, to think up what she writes, I like her so much! Even though I am no one, I don’t have any feelings, I don’t have any feelings? How can I write without feelings? I should not have written the word ‘feelings’ three times, and that one makes it four, it is an unnecessary reiteration, and now I need to write that I don’t have an identity, nor any need to love or be loved, that I’m just a simple narrator…) [p. 111, my translation].

Naufragi a la neu was awarded the 31^st Blai Bellver Prize for Fiction, and I believe it was thoroughly deserved.

Xavier Aliaga's Dos metres quadrats de sang jove - A Review

Xavier Aliaga, Dos metres quadrats de sang jove (Barcelona: Alrevès, 2014). 187 pages.

It is rather regrettable that the name of my home town has become synonymous with insufferable levels of political corruption. Valencia is the setting for this short crime nouvelle by Xavier Aliaga. The protagonist is detective Feliu Oyono, a Catalan-speaking policeman of African ancestry, who is quite obsessed with sex and the female body.

I may be picking at straws here, but one of Chandler’s commandments for writing good crime fiction says that the novel needs to be “realistic in character, setting and atmosphere”, and should deal with “real people in a real world”. Far be it from me to rule out the possibility that a black Valencian-born policeman exists. Anyone would most likely agree with me that such a fictitious character is less than likely to speak and write the local language the way Oyono does, though.

Against a background of dirty play and internecine wars within the ultraconservative political party in government – the PP is never mentioned, but the references are obvious – Oyono and his assistant Amalia Vigarany must find out who killed a young idealist journo called Manel.

Manel is (was) one of the founders of a web-based investigative newspaper, La ciutat digital. Their reports denouncing the ever-present corruption networks and the misappropriation of public funds (in this sense, Aliaga cannot be accused of making up too much!) have already earned them the wrath of ruling politicians and senior bureaucrats. One night while he’s alone at the newspaper offices someone whose face is covered with a balaclava breaks in and slashes his throat in one swift, highly ‘professional’ cut. Manel’s colleagues are naturally quite devastated.

Feliu Oyono and Amalia interrogate the journalists but find nothing much – they all seem to get along quite well. Yet setting up a newspaper from scratch is neither easy nor cheap, so they decide direct their detective skills towards the source of the funding that has made La ciutat digital possible. What they find is that Enric, co-founder and rival to Manel for the sexual favours of the only female reporter, has been receiving monies from an obscure company based in Buenos Aires. What is really going on?

It appears that Manel and Enric were not on such amicable terms anymore when the former was murdered while typing on his keyboard and bled to death, leaving two square metres of young blood on the office floor. Oyono and Amalia turn the screws on him but it all seems to be a red herring: they might not like each other that much, but that should be no reason to murder your former friend and colleague. Or should it?

In the end, the reason Manel was savagely murdered happens to be quite unrelated to the murky financing he had been arguing about with the co-founder of the newspaper. The plot meanders rather aimlessly: Aliaga throws in the story of Amalia’s affair with a radical Basque youth while she was serving in Navarre. Its inclusion seems rather unwarranted, and given how short Dos metres quadrats de sang jove actually is, the reader may wonder about its purpose.

The novella’s structure is developed mostly by means of monologues. At times this works, but other times replacing dialogue with dramatic monologues feels too artificial. The inclusion of blog posts written by Manel before his death and later released as they had been programmed by the deceased journalist adds some spice. But Aliaga is at his best when he lets the characters speak. His dialogues can be witty, lively, full of force and irony:

- Listen very carefully, you son of a bitch! Why should we believe an impostor? ‘Oooh! We’re a persecuted media! Manel has paid with his life for the work we do unveiling corruption! Me! Me! Me! It could have been me! Why haven’t they come after me? I cannot sleep thinking about all this!’… Do you think we’re stupid?

- I… I haven’t said that… What I believe is that you’re going the wrong way about this. Neither Alberola nor anyone around him knew that Manel had found out about the scam. I hid that information, I wasn’t interested, please believe me, I was certain Manel would let it go to the keeper… The thing with his blog has taken us by surprise.

- And how can you be so sure Albarola didn’t know?

- He would’ve told me. Like all politicians, he’s a bit paranoid.

- And now you’ll tell me, you piece of shit, that you’ve had no contact with him since Manel’s death, that you’ve told him it’s over.

- No, I’ll tell you the truth, we spoke at length. Alberola was amazed, he was shocked. And very worried, too. He said that maybe we had lost our grip on things, that some of his rivals hadn’t taken in the issue too well. I think he was being truthful. He’s a very ambitious pollie, he’ll go to any lengths to crush those who bother him, but I don’t think he’s capable of such an atrocity, to be honest.

- And how did he intend to handle the situation?

- He asked not to meet with us again for a long while and to fuel the conspiracy theory from La Ciutat. To do that for a few months and wait until the storm cleared up… But it will not clear up… And I can’t take this anymore, I’m on edge…

- You’re lucky we’re not at the station, ‘cause I’d give you another kind of edge over there. You know what I think, arsehole? That you told everything to your friend the minister in order to protect your grubby deal. In the best of cases, you washed your hands of it, you played dumb, ‘whatever will be, will be’, you thought. And I also think you had another reason not to be concerned about what might happen to Manel: you have never been able to swallow the fact that Empar preferred him, that she was still in love with a man without your physique, without your charisma, but with so big a brain and so big a heart that the office was not big enough for him. An honest, upright person. The opposite of you, you piece of shit, you filthy sewer rat. Know that we’ll go all the way, you’re up to your neck in shit, you retard…

- That’s enough, Amalia.

- Did you get it, you bastard? We’ll get you!

- For fuck’s sake, Amalia! That’s enough, I said! (p. 139-141, my translation)

Had Aliaga worked further with the manuscript (which incidentally contains some typos in the few Spanish passages it includes) Dos metres quadrats… would have probably increased its length and its literary attractiveness. As it stands, it is a rather lame specimen of crime fiction, its shortcomings outnumbering its virtues.

Isabel Olesti's La pell de l'aigua: A Review

Isabel Olesti, La pell de l'aigua (Barcelona: Proa, 2012). 285 pages.

The protagonist of Isabel Olesti’s La pell de l’aigua [The skin of water] is a nameless middle-aged unhappily married woman who wakes up from a dream (more like a nightmare, I daresay) in which a slimy slug is crawling up her thigh. “It was wet and cold and it was making her shudder. It was creeping up slowly, crawling on her skin in a zigzag. It left behind a film of spittle, like sticky mucus, a rather clear trail, a path; as if it were saying: this is mine.” (p. 9, my translation)

The highly symbolic dream of the slug gives way to the woman’s grim reality when she’s awake and aware of what’s being done to her by her husband, who exclaims: “Why don’t you just open your legs? I can’t do anything this way!” (p. 10). Once he’s done with his business, she just lies down and pretends to sleep, ignoring her husband’s comments about wallpaper being démodé.

The novel is set in the city of Barcelona in 1982. The narrator makes mention of the politician who would go on to win an election. Yet it is the visit of Pope Wojtyla that will lead to a dangerous adventure that will change (let us assume so) her life forever.

Everything seems to be ready for a successful papal visit. But the weather is not going to help. On the days John Paul II is to give his blessing to the faithful (her husband appears to be one of the most zealous believers any religious leader would wish to have) the heavens open and rain comes down mercilessly. Near the Montserrat monastery several young girls are killed as a result of a landslide, while the crowds gathered in the centre of Barcelona are left wondering, and wandering, in the rain.

The protagonist gets lost (wanders off, rather) and loses sight of her three daughters and her husband while they are battling other thousands of people to get a close view of the Pontiff. Soaked to the bone, confused and not knowing too well what she wants to do, she quickly jumps into a taxi and flees to the Ramblas, where she will meet Pura, a chatty transvestite from northern Castelló. For reasons that are difficult to ascertain, Pura decides to look after her and takes her to his flat.

Later she accompanies Pura on the streets for a while; at a bar she meets a much older man and goes with him. Another taxi, another rambling commentary from a taxi driver, and they finally go to the port and have sex on one of the huge cement blocks. Had La pell de l’aigua been published in English, it might have been long- or even shortlisted for the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction award. But wait, because after that there is yet another taxi, and a visit to a shabby, putrid hotel room where they are told to hurry up with whatever it is they need to do…

Unfortunately, it is not a lot that can be said in favour of this hit-and-miss narrative. If the intention was to produce a psychological study of the protagonist, it fails miserably. Not a single character in the novel gets to be portrayed beyond the merest, sketchiest outline. There is no depth to the husband or the older man (who happens to be a taxidermist). The protagonist appears to be contented to nod or shake her head to almost every one of Pura’s questions or jokes.

The narrative is interspersed with brief pseudoscientific description of the copulation habits of different animal species: chimpanzees, spiders, worms, mantis, birds, iguanas, bedbugs, etc. Although the reason for their inclusion will ultimately be illuminated by what happens in the taxidermist’s house in an outer hilly barrio of Barcelona, in my opinion these odd passages interfere rather than add value to the story. The thread is lost too often.

The idea behind La pell de l’aigua would seem good in principle, but it has been poorly developed. The female protagonist psychological issues are never fully fleshed out. It hints at a childhood sexual trauma (the narrator repeats the different admonitions or pieces of advice that, as a child, she received from her father, mother and grandmother ad nauseam), yet the issue is never directly tackled or resolved. Despite the denouement, which includes a murder, the novel leaves a strange aftertaste. Perhaps the main problem in this novel lies in the fact that the omniscient narrator has adopted the point of view of the protagonist: it is a story told in both a confusing and confused way, and would have benefitted heaps from a more strict editorial intervention.

La pell de l’aigua was awarded the 2011 Mallorca Prize. Go figure why.

Raons de sang i foc, by Pep Castellano: A Review

Pep Castellano, Raons de sang i foc (Alzira: Bromera, 2011). 214 pages.

From a reader’s point of view – at least from this reader’s point of view – one of the most prized aspects of historical fiction should perhaps be the sense of verisimilitude characters can bring with them. It is not enough to provide accurate descriptions of the costumes, tools and other utensils that were used in the past; nor is it sufficient to give an enjoyable account of the historical events that constitute the backdrop to a given story. No, we probably want more: We want to hear the words, the accents, the idioms; we want to ‘feel’ the sounds that make a character even more credible to our eyes.

Widower Muhammad, a cobbler, lives in 16^th-century Castelló with his only daughter, Saïda. She’s a real beauty, and works very hard to help her father in the tanning business. They are Moorish, moriscos, and in the early 16^th century their social status is very low – the Valencian moriscos have become sort of pariahs in their own lands. They’re being targeted by the budding bourgeoisie made up of guilds of Christian craftsmen, while in the rural areas the aristocracy exploits them rather abusively.

When procuress Salma witnesses the rape of Saïda by her uncle Ahmed (nicknamed ‘Fartdevi’, i.e., Drunkard), she stabs him to death. With the help of Muhammad she does her best to pretend it has all been an accident (Ahmed, drunk as usual, fell asleep close to the hearth and got burnt), but the Deputy Governor, Jeroni, finds a bloodied shirt in the house and accuses Saïda of murder. Salma, a woman whom everyone seems to owe some favour of one kind or another, has always been very protective of Saïda, and somehow manages to convince him to keep quiet about the whole affair. As a result, they will all be blackmailed.

The times are tumultuous, to say the least. There is violence everywhere. The agermanats (city-based Brotherhoods of craftsmen and tradesmen) mercilessly ransack and destroy the Moorish quarter of Castelló and raid the village of Xivert, only to be crushed later by the mascarats’ army led by the Duke of Sogorb.

The Castle in Xivert

Raons de sang i foc is however a love story set against this historical backdrop of violence, wars and religious persecution. It is being told by Selma to her sister, a shepherdess who is a bit of an outsider, and who has apparently been attacked by soldiers and left mute. Selma (nicknamed Cerafina, i.e., Fine Wax) tells the love story of Saïda and Manel, apprentice to a tanner. Selma facilitates their trysts (her house is no bordello, though, she assures us) and helps them find a way to leave these troubled lands. “What woeful times we have had to live in, eh? Love and death go hand in hand, you see”, she tells her sister.

Against the widespread racial and religious prejudices that dictate the course of events, Manel and Saïda have not only to fight their own mistrust and prejudices but also pretend what they are not in order to survive.

Cap i Corb, where Saïda, Manel and Selma made a bold decision.

Castellano’s real success in Raons de sang i foc is Selma. Her voice, her narrative tone, echoes across the centuries in her broad street talk, the idioms and proverbs she employs to describe other characters, to give advice to Saïda or Manel or to criticise the powerful, and also her sense of humour. With very witty dialogues, this is a book to read aloud. This is not only entertaining historical fiction but also a well-constructed narrative whose intrinsically oral qualities allow the reader to hear a 16^th-century Moorish Celestina tell a story with flair. Let Selma take you back time. It is a worthwhile trip.

Raons de sang i foc was awarded the 2010 Blai Bellver Prize for Fiction.

Reseña: La col·laboradora, de Empar Moliner

Empar Moliner, La col·laboradora (Barcelona: Columna, 2012). 317 páginas.

Uno ya no sabe si la hipercorrección política se impondrá a la larga al buen conocimiento de las lenguas. Uno de los casos más flagrantes que he podido comprobar recientemente tiene relación con el tema de esta novela de la catalana Empar Moliner. Me refiero al demencial (por lo pobremente redactado) artículo que firmó en su momento W. M. S. en El País y que llevaba por título “El tabú y la leyenda de los escritores fantasma”. Para que nos entendamos: un ‘escritor fantasma’ es una mediocre invención, un chapucero calco del inglés (ghost writer), y que en el peor de los casos podría llevar al lector a pensar en un escritor que sea un fantasma, es decir, una “persona envanecida y presuntuosa” (acepción nº4 en el DRAE). El concepto de ghost writer del inglés ha existido desde hace mucho tiempo en la lengua castellana (y en la catalana, véase aquí) como ‘negro’ literario. Me pregunto qué malabarismos lingüísticos haría para evitar mencionar la palabra ‘negro’ al hablar de un ‘mercado negro’ (o ya puestos, del mismísimo Mar Negro…) Pero divago, mejor vuelvo al libro que nos ocupa: La col·laboradora.

Magdalena Rovira es una negra literaria. Cerca ya de la madurez, separada de su marido y con una niña de tres años, se dedica a escribir las biografías de famosos en 120 páginas, que luego se publican como autobiografías. Un día el agente literario y examante Oriol Sánchez le ofrece la posibilidad de preparar el manuscrito inicial de un libro que firmará un famoso hispanista llamado Paul Adams. El libro novelará la historia de una mujer, Antonieta Gelabertó, que fue asesinada durante la guerra civil y enterrada en una fosa común cerca de los viñedos del Penedés; es un libro que los miembros de la Comisión de la Memoria Histórica han decidido financiar para ayudar a realzar el perfil público de la Consellera de Cultura.

La novela se presenta como la confesión ácida y brutalmente sincera de Magdalena: una mujer que se reconoce como cocainómana y alcohólica. Empar Moliner permite que sea ella quien desvele sus múltiples defectos en su personalidad, pero al mismo tiempo logra que el lector pueda entrever algunas de sus virtudes. En su narración, Magdalena Rovira va escrutando implacablemente a los personajes que poco a poco van formando parte de una cada vez más rocambolesca trama en torno al mundo editorial, periodístico, televisivo y político.

Moliner resulta ser una muy capaz observadora de la sociedad catalana de principios del siglo XXI: sus dardos van lanzados con puntería contra los tópicos y costumbres del vano y vanidoso consumismo de las clases medias, contra sus extravagancias y otros comportamientos compulsivos, amén de los extremados cambios de actitud que los caracterizan, y finalmente contra la mendacidad, la afectación y la vacuidad que dominan el mundo literario y editorial.

Los personajes no tienen desperdicio: Judit Guitart, la nieta de la mujer asesinada en la guerra, una mujer ingenua y desorientada que cae en los brazos de un emigrante irregular senegalés que la utiliza para conseguir su tarjeta de permanencia, y que después también se lía con el escritor Mateu Garín. Cati Rodés, a quien apodan la Gafe, política en la Comisión por la Memoria Histórica, y cuya metedura de pata final resulta épica y desternillante. Oriol Sánchez, agente literario y experto aprovechado. O la famosa periodista Xus Soriguer, paradigma de la mujer narcisista, engreída y mediática que tan popular se puede hacer entre la masa consumidora de bazofia. Incluso el hispanista Paul Adams, retratado primorosamente por Rovira como un borrachín perezoso y poco fiable en su senectud.

La única pega, y que no lo es tanto, que le encuentro a La col·laboradora estriba en los excesivamente (al menos para mi gusto) numerosos paréntesis que jalonan la narración. El paréntesis como recurso metanarrativo podría haber tratado de aportar una perspectiva contrapuesta, si no contradictoria, con la predominante en el conjunto de la novela, en lugar de reducirse a una mera explicación, justificación o excusa por parte de la única narradora, Rovira.

El significativo trasfondo de violencia histórica, el cobarde asesinato de la abuela de Judit Guitart en un terrible episodio en realidad ajeno a la guerra pero causado por ella, es un adecuado contrapunto a la mordaz sátira del sistema cultural, editorial y político existente en España (no solamente en Cataluña, no lo olvidemos). La escritura teledirigida de libros para que a su autor (que no siempre es el verdadero autor) le sea concedido de antemano un premio literario es un secreto a voces: y para más vergüenza y sonrojo ajeno, los que pasan por críticos literarios del establishment periodístico en el estado español les hacen el juego a todos. ¿Dónde están de verdad los fantasmas?

Reseña: L'illa d'Antígona, de Tomeu Matamalas

Tomeu Matamalas, L'illa d'Antígona (Pollença: El Gall Editor, 2010). 263 páginas.

Hay un mar por el cual siento especial predilección, y es el mar donde yo me crié, en cuyas aguas me bañé innumerables veces y bajo cuyas olas normalmente mansas (en comparación con el océano Pacífico, al que estoy ahora acostumbrado) me asomé de pequeño al piélago y sus misterios. Es el Mediterráneo, el cual es el gran escenario global de esta estupenda novela histórica, y que en los años del Renacimiento adquirió un protagonismo central que solamente lograron disminuir los descubrimientos geográficos posteriores, en dirección opuesta, hacia poniente.

En L’illa d’Antígona, el mallorquín Tomeu Matamalas asume la personalidad de un pintor, Alexis Stavros, hijo adoptivo de una familia griega en la hermosa ciudad bizantina, Constantinopla, poco antes del asedio y posterior caída en manos del imperio otomano del sultán Mehmet II en 1453.

Gentile Bellini, Retrato de Mehmet II

Ya en su vejez, Stavros dirige la narración de su muy intensa vida a un hombre llamado Nícies, por quien Stavros declara tener una gran predilección. La autobiografía la escribe Stavros en la Venecia de principios del siglo XVI, en la que un tal Tiziano comienza a descollar entre el selecto grupo de pintores y artistas al servicio de los ricos mercaderes de la ciudad-estado. Nícies es la gran incógnita con la que juega el autor, y por tanto no debe ser revelada en una reseña.

Autorretrato de Giovanni Bellini

Todavía siendo un niño, Alexis es testigo del brutal asesinato de sus padres por los soldados turcos, los jenízaros; salva la vida pero es hecho prisionero y vendido como esclavo. Durante varios años trabajará en una hacienda agrícola, protegido por otro esclavo al que conoce como Genadi. Su protector resulta ser un influyente patriarca de la iglesia ortodoxa, y gracias a él consigue regresar a Estambul (el cambio de nombre refleja ya que el orden geopolítico ha quedado para siempre trastocado).

Giorgione, Retrato de Laura

Una vez en Estambul, una carambola del destino le vuelve a reunir con la niña de la que estuvo enamorado cuando era apenas un mozalbete, pero la guerra y sus nefastas consecuencias han cambiado mucho las cosas, e Irene (que también fue vendida como esclava a un mercader llamado Tamarack) vive otra vida como prostituta de lujo. Los dos hacen planes para huir de Estambul e iniciar una vida juntos en otro lugar, pero Tamarack se lo impedirá al asesinar a Irene de forma cruel.

Matamalas demuestra ser un gran conocedor de la pintura renacentista italiana; las descripciones de las técnicas pictóricas, o de la cuidadosa elaboración de un cuadro o de un fresco, descripciones o explicaciones que pone por boca de sus personajes, denotan sustanciales conocimientos en la materia, pero de todos modos su inclusión en la narración del pintor griego resulta muy natural y nada pesada para el lector.

La tempesta de Giorgione supuso una ruptura con la convención pictórica de la época 

Ante todo, en L’illa d’Antígona impera la amenidad de la narración: con un lenguaje pulcro y cuidado, su temática artística secundaria le confiere una dimensión culta nada desdeñable. Pero es especialmente la narración que Stavros hace de su vida lo que mantiene al lector cautivado: la historia de cómo Alexis acude a la isla de Antígona para intentar superar la pérdida de Irene, y cómo conoce a Melina, la sencilla y encantadora muchacha que le vuelve a enganchar a la vida. Cuando regresa a Estambul, Melina no puede soportarlo y con el paso del tiempo pierde la ilusión de vivir, y muere al dar a luz a su hija, su segunda descendiente. Alexis, aconsejado por Gentile Bellini se marcha a Venecia.

Los personajes históricos no suponen ninguna mella en la verosimilitud de la novela, algo que es de agradecer en estos tiempos. Por último, para quien no esté acostumbrado a las peculiares formas ortográficas  que se emplean en esas hermosas islas mediterráneas en las que la lengua catalana es lengua autóctona, esas formas pueden en principio suponer una pequeña dificultad para sumergirse en el libro de Matamalas, pero el esfuerzo realmente vale la pena. L’illa d’Antígona fue galardonada ex aequo con el VI Premi Pollença de Novel·la.

Vicent Usó's La mà de ningú: A Review

Vicent Usó, La mà de ningú (Barcelona: Proa, 2011). 237 pages.

On occasions you feel like finding a book that simply fulfills its purpose as entertainment, a book that makes you enjoy the time you spend reading it, a book that frees you from the need to delve into philosophical or aesthetic issues. For many readers such an ideal is represented by the thriller. At the end of the day, all the reader needs to do is not to lose track of the plot and its threads. If the author is skilled enough and places good enough bait in the hook, the rest is usually, so to speak, a piece of cake.

Yet in La mà de ningú [Nobody’s Hand], Vicent Usó goes even further, for his take on the thriller is one that sets the reader a goal they can consider from various viewpoints and ultimately reach by taking different roads. The novel is made up of six apparently different, autonomous stories. Divided onto eight chapters, seven of those occur over two consecutive days (a Wednesday and a Thursday), while the last one is set on the following Monday. Each of the chapters is named after the key character in the corresponding section of the story.

The first one is André Labarbe, an old farmer who is stuck to his unchangeable habits. On an early morning he finds a hand, severed at the elbow, in the middle if the country track that runs parallel to the motorway. This macabre finding is to change his routine, as he decides to return home to call the police.

However, the next chapters appear to be unrelated to Labarbe’s gruesome discovery of the severed limb. This may put off readers who are accustomed to more simplistic, linear narrative plotlines. My advice, all the same, is to carry on reading: take up Usó’s challenge and find out what it is he is exactly offering you.

The novel is set in France. The set of characters comprises, apart from old Labarbe, a wacky truck driver from Eastern Europe, a Senegalese immigrant who struggles to eke out an existence on the streets of Paris, an estranged housewife fleeing her husband who finds shelter at a castle owned by a wealthy female philanthropist, a young squatter who earns her money juggling on Parisian streets and a rich doctor who lost her wife in a road crash, seemingly preoccupied with looking after their two daughters.

Should I give away any clues about the many events and their type that lead to Labarbe finding the hand that seems to have fallen out of the sky, I would be doing some great disservice to whoever wishes to read the book. I will simply say, thus, that it is a great read, that it has excellent pace, closer to allegretto than vivace, and that Usó polishes his language while being economical when making the portrait of his characters.

The dénouement is surprising because Usó has kept hidden an identity until that very moment. The well-off can easily put on a mask of bonhomie while wielding the power money gives them. But when the truth is out they become bogged down in depravity.

Vicent Usó had published nine novels before La mà de ningú, two of them shortlisted for the Sant Jordi Literary Prize. Read my review (in Spanish) of the also nicely surprising collection Subsól, by a writerly group named Unai Siset, to which Usó contributed a short story. 

I now invite you to read a brief excerpt in English.

André Labarbe

Suppose it was a Thursday. One Thursday in late November just a few years ago, not too many. The sun was not out yet and André Labarbe, 76 years of age, an officially retired farmer and decorated veteran of the Indochina war, felt an uncomfortable tickle in his belly and was suddenly afraid to face the day about to start. Even though he did not look like the type to get easily frightened and that nothing seemed to portend that this day would start in a way different from those that preceded it.  Let us say, therefore, that it was some sort of presentiment.

The thing is that André’s fears were not unwarranted, and in a few more minutes, at exactly eighteen minutes past six in the morning, already the victim of a remarkable upheaval, he was going to bend over double to vomit, by the side of a dusty road, the white coffee and the two pieces of toast his wife, Delphine Sainthuile, housewife and part-time farmer, had so lovingly spread with two layers, one of creamy soft butter underneath, and one on top, a thick flavoursome layer of their homemade tomato jam, the kind you cannot find in shops. But it was still forty-four minutes before that moment, and for the time being the alarm clock had just started to shatter the silence with its daily, rusty and bitter vibration. Like an indecisive snake, the man’s hand crawled from under the flannelette blanket that covered the married couple’s bodies towards the bedside table and, after feeling for it once or twice without success, found the origin of the noise and pressed the lever that put an end to the hammering of the two cracked bells. The silence restored, André lazed about for a while, as it was his habit, and finally turned on the bedside light and carefully got up. First he put down his legs on the floor, and then he pushed himself up on his elbows to avoid placing the strain of the manoeuvre on his back. He washed his face with cold water, as he had always done, and reacted to its biting contrast with noisy spasms, not realising that every morning he sprayed the mirror, the basin and the floor, but those were details he had never noticed before, and Delphine, probably too indulgent with him, had never thought it necessary to point them out to him. After making sure he had totally washed the sleep out of his eyes, he returned to the now empty bedroom, still feeling an immense weight behind his eyelids, and slowly began putting on the clothes that Delphine had purposely left on the radiator, so that he could feel the nice warmth of the fabric on his skin. At one end of the dresser, beneath the frame from which the pale faces of his two grandchildren watched him, was the letter he did not quite know how to assimilate. He looked at it for a second, but did not grab it. He knew what it said by heart, having read it and reread it scores of times, but hesitated to make a decision, and his indecision caused him to feel a tickle of unease in his belly. He tightened his belt and then put on his dark green overalls.

The lights were on when he went into the kitchen. He said good morning, turned on the radio to listen to the news and sat down to eat the breakfast ever-so-kind Delphine was already preparing for him. He took notice of her slowness, the vacillations that now affected his wife’s hands, and thought about how the years had already begun to be considerably onerous for her, although fortunately old age had not yet altered their loving devotion for each other and the reciprocal affection they had observed for who knows how long. A lifetime, so to speak. The idea comforted him, and he was even able to overcome the cramps still rumbling in his stomach. He heeded the radio announcer, who was updating details about a police investigation following a raid two days before on a Paris-based mafia network dedicated to the human trafficking of Sub-Saharan women, who, having being recruited by the criminals in a range of ways, were being forced into prostitution on the Parisian streets and brothels all over the country. The number of those arrested exceeded seventy, including pimps and prostitutes, claimed the announcer –whose voice was remarkably firm and clear so early in the morning– but the police were investigating whether one of the ringleaders had vanished thanks to an internal leak. Oblivious to any kind of self-criticism, a Parisian politician made the most of the report by declaring in his baritone voice that the fight against human trafficking was one of the priorities the government had set its sights on, and they would not spare any effort. When he finished his coffee, André went to the radio and turned it off, which did not give an NGO representative the chance to ask a (markedly rhetorical) question about what sort of fate would await those women captured by the officers, who apparently saw no distinction between a prostitute and a criminal. While his wife took the plate and the cutlery and began washing up, André returned to their bedroom. He opened a drawer in the bedside table, grabbed his wallet, his keys and a clean handkerchief, his initials elegantly embroidered in gold on a corner, and he distributed the lot in the many pockets of his overalls. When he was about to go out, he retraced his steps and stretched his hand to seize the letter, but his fingertips remained for a second on the soft white paper, without clasping it. He observed the happiness of the two children in the photograph and let his finger slide down the glass, fantasising about caressing their gentle, soft cheeks. He lifted the frame with care, took the envelope and put it in his pocket.