Resumo de Last Evenings With Theresa

Marsé tells us the story of a lower-class boy who falls in love with a
girl of money in the Spain of 1956. He aspires to climb the social
ladder; she is a bourgeois student with those political ideas of left,
that can be expressed only by those who know them all. The author
explains it to us perfectly: she is concerned with ideology and he with
money.

The story takes place in Barcelona and has some very well written
descriptions that transport us there. Thus we walk behind Pijoaparte
through the avenues and the other streets we feel we know, we go to the
beach, to the bars. We sense the individual environment of each place,
we have a good time at the festivals, we know the card players of Mount
Carmel, we feel like conspirators with the students of the left and we
shudder whenever Manolo goes on a job. We also hear many phrases in
Catalan, just as if we were there.

With obvious sarcasm, they present us with the ideas of the rich young
left, its desire for equality, of which those who are below them,
socially speaking, don't so much as take any notice, still less show
any sign of taking into account, since they appear absurd to them.

He emphasizes the way pseudo-intellectuals have of complicating life,
making the simplest of things difficult. How they deny any reality in
any idea they believe sublime, opposing everything that does not fit
into their own neat little picture.

But also those in love deny reality, they always want to idealize being
loved, until the monotomy of life makes us see them for what they are
and then we become disappointed and lose all interest. Theresa could
not believe that her loved one was a just another everyday person; no,
she believes that he must be an intellectual like her, that he must
want to share her ideology, that he must be as full of longing for
adventure as she is.

There are marked differences between the young women that the author
presents to us: Maruja, an unaffected young woman in love who discovers
nothing; Theresa who also makes no discoveries but who also believes
she knows it all; and "Jeringa" who appears not to uncover anything but
does know about everything going on around her.

A very well written work that presents a society to us with several viewpoints from which to think, in a very interesting way.

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