(4.5 stars) The Spanish Civil War (1936 - 1939) and the subsequent dictatorship of General Francisco Franco form the underpinning of this hypnotic novel, which is simultaneously a love story, a story about political and personal aspirations, and a story about writing and the creative process. In a narrative that swirls through time and place, often turning in upon itself and revisiting earlier events from different points of view, life during the tumultuous Civil War unfolds and is carried forward for more than thirty years of Franco's harsh dictatorship.
When the book opens in 1969, Minaya, a university student, has just been released from detention for his part in a student demonstration. Seeking refuge in Magina, where his elderly uncle lives, Minaya intends to search for the missing masterwork of a little known poet named Jacinto Solana and to write his doctoral thesis on Solana in the seclusion of the countryside. His uncle Manuel and Solana were childhood friends, and both had been in love with the same woman, Mariana Rios, an artist's model.
As the story flashes back to 1936 - 37, the complex relationship of Manuel, Solana, and Mariana unfolds. Mariana, we learn at the beginning of the novel, was shot to death, supposedly by a stray bullet fired through the window on her wedding night, during the earliest days of the Spanish Civil War. Manuel never recovered, closing their nuptial bedroom and living as a recluse. Solana, a Communist, endured ten years of political detention and torture before returning to Manuel's house in Magina. When Minaya arrives to stay with his uncle, Solana is already dead, according to his friends, shot by government troops, his papers burned, and his masterpiece, Beatus Ille, missing. With the help of Inez, who works for his uncle, Minaya searches for the manuscript, determined to restore this poet to the place he deserves as a revolutionary Spanish writer.
The intense, kaleidoscopic narrative, filled with lyrical and sensual descriptions, gradually reveals the whole story of Manuel and Mariana, at the same time that it also details the much later death of Solana. Details of the civil war, its tumult, and its aftermath broaden as the communists, anarchists, and supporters of the status quo contend for the future of Spain. As the narrative swirls, multiple points of view add depth and intensity to the narrative. The style is hypnotic, catching up the reader in the mood and weaving a spell, despite the fact that this unusual novel moves obliquely and lacks the usual beginning, middle, and end. It is not unusual for some sentences to be one hundred fifty words long and for paragraphs to go on for pages, yet the narrative speeds along on the strength of its spell and the intensity of its mood. A novel that will appeal to readers willing to succumb to its mood and not worry about its complex style and swirling chronology, A Manuscript of Ashes is an intriguing early novel by an author who is one of Spain's most honored contemporary authors. n Mary Whipple
Sepharad
In Her Absence
The Gaze on the Past: Popular Culture and History in Antonio Munoz Molina's Novels
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