The critics of
Babelia
analyze this week
Good luck
, Rosa Montero's latest novel, as well as titles by Federico Jeanmaire, Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, Éric Vuillard, Víctor Gómez Pin, and, finally, the reissue of
The Naked Woman
, the fascinating surrealist book by Armonía Somers
GOOD LUCK.
Rosa Montero
The new novel by someone who, like Rosa Montero, has to his credit a long and versatile narrative career does not usually disappoint, to which is added the attentive and lucid reading of reality when, in his journalistic task, he acts as a chronicler and critical testimony of the present.
This new novel,
Good luck
, shares with
La carne
(2016) certain features of compositional structure or technique, and in both works the conflict of the protagonists, their personal drama, springs from the same root.
Read the full review of ANA RODRÍGUEZ-FISCHER.
THE WAR OF THE POOR.
Eric Vuillard
Éric Vuillard is synonymous with histories of History as well as encyclopedic erudition and stylistic display, always around a denunciation that uses the past to gain strength in the present.
The war of the poor
pretends to be a historical tale when it is once again a mocking denouncement of collective discontent, of the petiteness of power and the cloudiness of leadership, of the
petite histoire
looming into the Official History, the miniaturist detail of Müntzer's life and other agitators and enlightened supporters of the underprivileged before the fresco of the collective deeds in times of the Reformation.
Read the full review of JAVIER APARICIO MAYDEU.
END OF SEASON.
Ignacio Martinez de Pisón
In classical tragedy, the evil (or, rather, the transgression of the norm) has already happened.
It is the point prior to the beginning of the work.
In a sense, tragic heroes are not characters to whom “things from the outside” happen, but individuals who must wonder about their origin, about the beginning of the mismatch that their own life implies.
End of season
appeals to this archetypal form of storytelling.
Read the full review of CARLOS PARDO.
WËRRA.
Frederick Jeanmaire
The reader of this review will have read a novel about wars.
Only if you have read the
Iliad
will you know everything there is to know about them.
If I had to recommend one written in the 20th century and part of the present, I would recommend
The Nudes and the Dead
, by Norman Mailer.
But if someone were to ask me about another reference novel written in Spanish, I would not hesitate to recommend the one I am
reviewing
today,
Wërra
, by the Argentine writer Federico Jeanmaire (1957).
Read the full review of J. ERNESTO AYALA-DIP.
THE HONOR OF THE PHILOSOPHERS.
Victor Gomez Pin.
Víctor Gómez Pin (Barcelona, 1944) reviews the biographies of more than 60 figures of thought and science - men and women - whose bond consists in the fact that they were able to overcome with integrity, and thanks to the help of the intellect, reason, the art or the convictions, the adversity that at some point fell on their lives.
Read the full review of LUIS FERNANDO MORENO CLAROS
THE NAKED WOMAN.
Somers Harmony
The naked woman, the
first novel, announces what Harmony Somers will do with the surrealist heritage: rewrite, enlarge or obscure the direct, cut off the sentences, dominate his own tendency towards end-of-century decadence.
He will do so in his short stories, in his extraordinary
A Portrait for Dickens
and in the legendary
Only Elephants Find Mandrake
.
This is why the sensitive differences between the direct representation of female sexuality in the 1950 version and the refined and twisted treatment of limitless sexuality in the 1966 version are revealing. Read the entire review of NORA CATELLI.