Review

Nada

By Carmen Laforet

Published by Vintage

This passionately melodramatic novel, set in Barcelona after the civil war, was first published in 1945.

It is to be hoped that Edith Grossman’s sparkling new translation will bring it to the attention of a new generation of readers, because it is an astonishing piece of writing.

Andrea, an impoverished eighteen-year-old from the countryside, comes to Barcelona to study literature at the university. Unable to afford lodgings of her own, she is forced to live with her relatives in their gloomy apartment. From the moment of her arrival late at night, it is apparent to Andrea that deep unhappiness and violent emotions have all but unhinged these sorry people.

Fearful Aunt Angustias won’t allow her to take a step without her permission; Juan, constantly enraged, beats his red-haired wife Gloria, goaded by his tempestuous brother Ramón; and Andrea’s grandmother, a ‘black-white blotch of a decrepit little old woman’, worries for her sons and for beautiful Gloria and her baby. Lurking in the background is the sinister housekeeper, with her greenish teeth and beloved dog Thunder.

On a daily basis, the members of this gothic entourage throw themselves into battle with other. Andrea maintains the air of an appalled yet disinterested observer, but is alternately wooed then spurned by them. Most dangerous of them all is the slender, darkly charming, but manipulative Ramón, who lives in a garret at the top the building, smoking strong cigarettes and playing the violin.

Andrea escapes the doom-laden atmosphere of the apartment by going to her classes at the university, where she is befriended by the beautiful and vivacious Ena. Weekend excursions to the beach with Ena and her boyfriend give Andrea a sense of carefree joy – ‘What incomparable days!’ – but when the swirling vortex of her family draws the curious Ena into its grasp, the girls’ friendship is tested.

The intensity and confusion experienced by Andrea as she emerges into womanhood is beautifully conveyed by Laforet. Phrases not out of place in an adolescent’s diary pepper the text – ‘torrents of light’ pour into her life; Ena makes her ‘understand the pulsing of damp mud heavy with vital juices’ – but by the end of the novel, Andrea is writing with world-weary cynicism: ‘I had quickly read a page of my life that wasn’t worth thinking about any more’; ‘I was realising, for the first time, that everything goes on, turns grey, is ruined in the living.’

At its core, Nada is brutal. It is about shame, despair and hunger. It is claustrophobic, unnerving and violent (physically and psychologically). But perhaps most of all, it is about how emotions will manifest themselves as twisted, ugly and dangerously powerful in times of despair.

Reviewed by James Smith, Booktrust website editor

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Translator: Edith Grossman