pickArquimbau does such a good job of showing the world through Laura Vidal's eyes, yet despite the first-person narrative there's a feeling of perspective, of being able to see her as a figure against the ground of her own experiencing. Laura's youthful shyness develops into an emotional self-distancing, and finally into cynicism and an isolation she convinces herself is strength and independence. There's obviously much autobiography here 👇🏼
"Wrinkles are devastating for women! A quite undeserved punishment! Because no woman deserves a wrinkled face. Wrinkles should be hidden in the heart, or perhaps not, perhaps not even in your heart, because wrinkles there might be fatal and we ought not to die, though we might as well, because when a woman has wrinkles she's already half dead, and couldn't care less if she died."
“I realised that morality is elastic and that you can stretch it this way or that according to individual need and that the poor who can allow themselves to lead strict moral existences are the exception.”
First day of spring reading in the back garden. Listening to the Red Hot + Blue Cole Porter tribute album in support of AIDS charities, Erasure are singing that "It's Too Darn Hot", and my ice coffee is fortified with vodka and Kahlúa??❤??☕??
#BooksandMusic #BooksandCoffee #BooksandBooze
"Father, what is 'politics'?"
"A load of shit."
☝??
I love this author photograph - so striking; and that eyebrow!
As much as I'm enjoying reading Apuleius' Transformations, having got through a big chunk of it I wanted something else to turn to, & this was at hand.
Opening in the 1930s with the declaration of the Catalonian Second Republic, 14 year old Laura Vidal is swept along on the joyous tide of independence, which is destined to be crushed by Franco's fascist regime. Laura later reminisces on the years she & her country-people lost to the dictatorship.
It's a rather grey & very windy day by the lake today, so I think I'll be upping sticks shortly ?
The book's author profile says, "In the 1930s she was part of a group of feminists who campaigned across Catalonia for female suffrage...She was President of the United Front of Women on the Left...The Francoist state condemned her for being 'Marxist' & 'having the worst possible moral stances'."
Fascist censure sounds like a recommendation to me!
pickMorning breakfast with this great book that takes place during the times of Franco in Spain.
Have you heard?' he asked him. 'It's looking very iffy. The colonial troops, Moors and Foreign Legion have rebelled in Morocco and it looks as if they're intending to land on the Peninsula. They say there'll be a revolt in Barcelona too, be cause it's simmering fit to burst.'
....People were strolling along the pavements of the Paral·lel, cheer fully jostling and laughing, not suspecting a thing.
'You're too sulky,' Hermínia would say. There's nothing wrong in looking at boys. They look at us, don't they? Besides, if you don't dare take a peek at them, you'll never know if you like them or not, and never be able to choose the one you fancy. Why should they choose and not us? Why can't we choose too?
'Us choose? Can women choose too??
Spain, 1930s
Forty Lost Years | 
There's a short author biography at the back which sketches out Arquimbau's life and times, which I read part way through the book itself, and which I think would have done well as an introduction. 4⭐, but I think it might, with reflection, grow to 5. 2y