It reminds me of dystopian science fiction. At the end, it is happiness that is only vaguely sensed. The story starts out rather sweetly, though you can sense that minor chord of oddness or even something macabre. They have some strange customs regarding death and the river and other things. I suspect that someone with more knowledge of Spanish history, particularly in the last century, would be more aware of what Rodoreda is saying, if that is the case.The story follows the life of a boy from age 14 to about 20. The back cover says it could be a metaphor to Franco's Spain. I have no doubt that Rodoreda was saying something larger than the story, but, unfortunately, without clues, I have been unable to grasp what that is. I guess it could be considered an alternate reality - one that is close to our reality. I enjoyed reading it, but it is all a little strange. She translates from Spanish and Catalan, and received an NEA Translation Fellowship for her work on Rodoreda. Martha Tennent was born in the U.S, but has lived most of her life in Barcelona where she served as founding dean of the School of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Vic. Exiled to France during the Spanish Civil War, and only able to return to Catalonia in the mid-1960s, she wrote a number of highly praised works, including The Time of the Doves and Death in Spring. Mercè Rodoreda is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Written over a period of twenty yearsafter Rodoreda was forced into exile following the Spanish Civil War Death in Spring is musical and rhythmic, and truly the work of a writer at the height of her powers.
The horrific rituals, however, stand in stark contrast to the novel's stunningly poetic language and lush descriptions. It is through these rituals, and the developing relationships between the boy and the townspeople, that Rodoreda portrays a fully-articulated, though quite disturbing, society. The novel tells the story of the bizarre and destructive customs of a nameless townburying the dead in trees after filling their mouths with cement to prevent their soul from escaping, or sending a man to swim in the river that courses underneath the town to discover if they will be washed away by a floodthrough the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy who must come to terms with the rhyme and reason of this ritual violence, and with his wild, child-like, and teenage stepmother, who becomes his playmate. Considered by many to be the grand achievement of her later period, Death in Spring is one of Mercè Rodoreda's most complex and beautifully constructed works.
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