In The Wilderness
(MANUEL RIVAS)
As a girl, Rosa is in the village church when a storm
uncovers some frescoes of beautiful women ? but the priest, Don Xil, explains
that these are actually representations of the seven sins, not holy virgins.
Later, wife to a husband she no longer loves, Rosa
confides in Misia, the old lady of the manor, who in turns tells stories of her
childhood. And Rosa''s dumb brother Simon finds
a steed, love and adventure.
Meanwhile Don Xil has been reincarnated as a mouse, as has the poacher
Matacans, and they are gnawing their way through the remnants of the manor
library ? instead of poaching hares, Matacans eats chapter XXIX of The
Liberal Ways of Hunting, "Hares and how to find them". Three
hundred ravens are the warrior-poets of the last king of Galicia, and
report back to him on the doings of the village. And half the inhabitants have
been transmigrated, "most of them mice, but there were also toads,
spiders, fleas, ants, cockroaches, bees, snails, slugs, moths and even a bat
that manoeuvred recklessly from the beams in the ceiling".
In the village of Arán, Manuel Rivas has merged the fantastic and the
mundane, magic and "Made in China". Arán is situated in
the course of Spanish history, from the Civil War to modernization and rural
depopulation, but at the same time in the world of Galician folk tales and
medieval romance. At first the structure of In the Wilderness is a
little disorienting, with the forty five chapters almost short stories in their
own right ? or perhaps, with their vivid imagery and evocative language, poems.
The result is a swirling, kaleidoscopic work, but one that works as a novel,
held together by its central characters.
Resumos Relacionados
- Rosa
- Imperfect Paradise
- A Few Green Leaves
- Vanka
- The Garden Of Secrets
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