Review by Choice Review
Cela, a prolific writer of fiction, poetry, essays, criticism, dictionaries, travel books, is best known for his novels in particular, The Family of Pascual Duarte and The Hive, the only two mentioned by the Swedish Academy upon awarding him the 1989 Nobel Prize for Literature. The book under review presents some picaresque elements reminiscent of Pascual Duarte, but its fragmentary structure and the historical background of the Spanish Civil War relate it to The Hive. It is the story of a murder and its revenge, two events for which the blind accordion player Gaudencio plays the same mazurka. Set in Cela's native Galicia, the novel dwells on the themes of death and sex, violence, and depravity. For many critics, Cela is essentially a stylist, a master who captures the rhythms of popular speech. This book's aesthetic value rests on the characterization of the four narrators through their speech patterns: the Galician syntax of the primary omniscient narrator; the numerous adjectives and incomplete sentences of Camilo; the literary references of Leboz'an; and the colloquial style of Adega. Rendering this aspect of narrativity has been the most difficult task of this excellent translation. Patricia Haugaard's close reading of Cela's novel conveys his use of irony and caricature as well as his tendency to shock his readers. For academic and public libraries. J. A. Hernandez; Hood College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The Spanish Civil War intrudes almost casually on the characters' picaresque doings in Cela's amorphous, bawdy novel, first published in Spain in 1983. Set in the mountainous region of Galicia and redolent with the Spanish countryside's wild beauty and its inhabitants' folkways, the work depicts a gallery of sinners, fools and misfits in overlapping yarns that span several generations. The plot involves Lionheart Gamuzo, who was shot in the back in 1936, and his brother Tanis, who in 1940 avenges the death with trained killer dogs. The blind Gaudencio, who works as an accordionist in a whorehouse, plays the same mazurka to commemorate these deaths, framing a sprawling canvas peopled with an enormous Rabelaisian cast, including jazz musician Uncle Cleto, who vomits whenever he's bored; the widow Fina, who is fond of bedding priests; and Roque Gamuzo, who is famed for his colossal member. Winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize for literature, Cela ( The Family of Pascual Duarte ) garrulously conveys the impression that ``mankind is a hairy, gregarious beast, wearisome and devoted to miracles and happenings.'' The musical translation captures his lyricism and colloquial flavor. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Set in Galicia during the Spanish Civil War, this 1984 winner of the Spanish National Prize for Literature revolves around two murders, but the multiple narrative lines make reconstructing the exact chronology of events difficult. This fifth novel by the 1989 Nobel laureate to be translated into English recalls Cela's earlier efforts: the swarm of characters in The Hive (Farrar, 1990), the tremendista repugnance of The Family of Pascaal Duarte (Classic Returns, LJ 3/1/90), and the sexual obsessions of San Camilo, 1936 ( LJ 12/91). Though the novel is unified by the almost symphonic recurrence of epithets and of images like rain, the experimental fragmentation of the structure is devoid of any breaks and palls about 100 pages before the end. In addition, the colloquial speech often resists effective translation. For academic and larger public libraries.-- Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC, Dublin, Ohio (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Cela, a Nobel winner in 1989, first published this shifting, fugal novel in Spain in 1983. In the rainy Galician mountains, a local townsperson is kidnapped and murdered; at book's end, his killing is avenged by his brother, who tells the killer-and-about-to-be-victim: ```It's not me who's killing you, it's the law of the mountain, I cannot stand in the way of the law of the mountain.''' In Cela's world--an almost malevolently folkloric, eccentric, capacious one of absolute knowledge between people--there is never a single agent of free will but only representatives of the fateful mass; death alone (here, either by misfortune or war, the Spanish Civil War of 1939) can differentiate individuals and dispatch them discretely. The pessimism is profane, repetitive, occasionally stunning. But last year's San Camilo, 1936--a book by Cela that in approach is almost identical to this one--is a more successful (and better translated) work. Much here feels mechanical, with grotesqueries piled atop each other too neatly and sequentially; only in its last 50 pages does an ashen commentary reveal itself, and by that time you've been lulled by the technical reiteration. Still, Cela is a brilliant, major figure, any of his works welcome.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
