Book Review: Nada

There is a kind of joke amongst students and academics of Spanish literature. Judging by the literature alone, one would think Spain came into existence in 1492, became great for two centuries, disappeared for another two, and reappeared in 1898. Since then, only two things worth mentioning have happened. The first was the Second Republic, the second was the Civil War and the dictatorship which followed. Even modern Spain doesn't really count as an event, since it is merely an apology for the five hundred years of prior history. At least, that's what us literature students concerned with Spain (facetiously) say. According to my friend who went to Mexico, substitute the words "Empire" and "Civil War" with "Independance" and "Revolution", and you have much the same story.

When I was told that my reading for my Spanish literature course would be Carmen Laforet's Nada, I rolled my eyes. "Oh goody," I thought, "yet another novel about misery in postwar Spain..." Needless to say I was not expecting to be entertained. However,after reading the first five chapters, I found myself wondering whether it was right for me to laugh at the apparently absurd situation I was reading. Misery is borne of desperation, and the desperation described in this novel is not one of a noble hero seeking vengeance, but that of an ordinary family torn apart by the turmoil of recent events. Recounted first-person through the eyes of the protagonist, Andrea, 1940s Barcelona is an empty mess; a pale, crumbling shadow of the proud Catalan capital it once was. Andrea's family reflect the situation around them, which could itself be read as a microcosm of the state of the country at large. The 18-year-old encounters her stoic and hypocritically-pious aunt (ironically called Angustias, meaning pain); her dazed and doting old grandmother; her two feuding uncles - Román, a manipulative and controlling musician, and Juan, his painter brother; and Juan's family, his frustrated wife, Gloria, and their infant son.

As Andrea explores her family history, juxtaposed against that of her bourgeois friend Ena, and gradually allows the outer depression to affect her, the reader can't help but feel this misery reflect back out from the novel itself. This effect is called in Spanish the tremendismo, and while the heightened realism is accentuated throughout the plot, the novel could also be read as a bildungsroman or picaresque: charting a moment in the life of a young orphaned woman who has yet to define her identity. Indeed, the story marks the end of her innocence and recounts the beginning of a journey undertaken by Andrea. Ever the outsider - symbolically, as the novel's narrator, as well as literally, being a new arrival to the city and entering an already establish family atmosphere of which she is merely an observer - Andrea's only real decisive moment comes at the end of the novel, a denuement I wuld be loth to spoil, here.

Laforet's first novel has also been tainted with that horribly overused cliche of being "semi-autobigraphical". This is debatable. Certainly, at the age of 18, Laforet went to study literature at University, and it is likely her experience of the city would be similar to what Andrea faces upon her arrival. However, the character of Andrea is not yet fully realised, and her position within the narrative demands that this is the case. Perhaps it would be fairer to say that Laforet drew on her very recent experience of her relatively short life to influence the novel: a far easier assumption to make.

In any case, this is an extremely well-written, engaging and at times grotesquely funny story. Though the situation in which the story unfolds is desperate and unhappy, one never feels pitiful or patronising. Rather, from an historical perspective, Nada provides the reader with a measured account of life in postwar Cataluña, albeit fictional, and allows us to wonder throught the ruinous avenues and stradas of its capital, observing its inhabitants and how their society has been so drastically changed.