8432207756

9788432207754

Ambientada en época de Franco

Muñoz Molina's first novel, written over the course of several summer holidays whilst he was still working as a civil servant in Granada, and an immediate hit when it came out in 1986. But this isn't your typical first novel: it's set up as a kind of postmodern, post-Spanish-Civil-War counterpart of The Magic Mountain, exploring the physical and emotional damage done by the war, the seductive temptations of literature, sex, death, and heroism, and the equally strong temptation to run away from all of them.

Minaya, scared by an unpleasant encounter with the police after being caught up in anti-Franco student protests in Madrid, decides to spend some time out of the way at his uncle Manuel's house in the small town of Mágina in the upper Guadalquivir valley, researching a thesis on Manuel's close friend, the forgotten Civil War poet Jacinto Solana. As Minaya slowly starts to unravel some of the mysteries of the house and its collection of assorted refugees past and present and finds a few scattered clues that seem to be leading him to Solana's missing manuscript, he also gets drawn into an affair with the enigmatic Ines, housemaid and 19th-century-French-fiction addict. And he's constantly on the verge of getting the train back to Madrid, but never quite gets beyond Mágina station.

With thirty years of hindsight you might say that Muñoz Molina is perhaps indulging himself a bit too much in his descriptions and his disorientingly unflagged changes of narrator, and hasn't quite found his leaner mature style yet. But I don't think you'd have said that if you were reading this book in 1986. He draws the reader right into the claustrophobic world of Manuel's town-house and we follow him cheerfully down the same blind alleys into which he is leading Minaya. Very rewarding. ( )

La calidad de la escritura de este libro es innegable. Muñoz Molina es especialista en requiebros, en todo tipo de detalles, por mínimos que a uno le parezcan, y con una gran calidad en la utilización del lenguaje, entre otros. Pero.........me ha parecido un libro espeso, triste, difícil de entender por momentos, lento. En definitiva que no me ha enganchado, La parte final es la que mejor me ha parecido, porque tenía ganas de desentrañar la maraña que ha provocado el autor, saber el desenlace final y porque, lo más triste, tenía unas ganas tremendas de terminarlo.

Por último quiero hacer una crítica no al autor ni al libro sino a las autoridades educativas. Se de buena tinta que en bachiller o selectividad eligen este libro para lectura y creo que por su complejidad no es el más adecuado. ( )