Primos: Two Spanish Books
If you believe that books contain a theoretical genetic material (which I do), then it’s possible for books to have cousins.
Maybe it’s the eye colour, the cheek bones, or the mannerisms of the written word, but it’s a delight to find books with shared genes out in the wild.
————————————————
Ahead of our trip to Spain in May, I wanted to read something set in Spain and by a Spanish author. I went to Stanford’s Book Store who arranges their selection by geographic location to see what was available. Performing a quick scan of titles, cover art and back-cover blurbs of several options, I landed on two titles: Of Saints and Miracles && When I Sing, Mountains Dance
Unknowingly, I bought cousins - primos, if you will.
The Shared DNA:
Location: Mountains of Spain
Key Event: unintended murder which forever alters the life of he who was responsible
Style: Neither heavily plot driven, but interspersed with stories of the area, bringing perspectives from multiple characters which develop a sense of place and time
Pixie Dust: Each with a small sliver of the supernatural; water sprites, the ghosts of witches roaming the areas they consider their home
Of Saints and Miracles by Manuel Astur
Main character Lino strikes down his brother after learning that he has sold away his livelihood, the home and farm they had inherited from their parents. Lino, already an outcast in his community, flees to the mountains to escape punishment, making his way toward the deserted village of his late mother.
Throughout the chapters we are exposed to individual characters of the town, the bar owner, the spinster, Lino and his family members, as well as the collective character of the mountain community; how society has changes as customs and technology have progressed throughout the years.
My take: This book felt atypical for fiction, or at least the fiction that I am used to. The fratricide at the start serves not as a starting point for a significant plot, but as a means to bring the history of this community to life told loosely around Lino’s family and circumstances. What it lacks in plot, it makes up for in compelling thoughts around society and progress.
You’re not supposed to have a favourite child, but I think everyone has a favourite cousin. Of Saints and Miracle was my preferred between the two as an overall book, but three chapters from When I Sing, Mountains Dance stood out for me as individual units that I much enjoyed.
When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Solá
This story begins again with death, the father of a young family struck down by lightning, his body then discovered by the souls of 17th century witches who live in the forest. We are then introduced to his widow and two children; daughter Mia, and son, Hilari, who is accidentally shot by his best friend and Mia’s boyfriend, Jaume, some years later. The remaining chapters are told from different perspectives, both human, flora, fauna, and the mountains themselves.
My favourite chapters were those told by non-human characters:
The mushrooms, the black chanterelles present in the forest at the time of the father’s death “A man came and ripped us out. The lightning came and killed the man… There is no grief if there is no death. There is no pain if the pain is shared. There is no pain if the pain is memory and knowledge and life. There is no pain if you’re a mushroom!” (pg 34)
The roe-buck recalling his birth, how his mother hid him away in the forest to care for him, and the fateful day with Jaume and Hilari are out hunting - Halari catching the bullet intended for the roe-buck. “A sound like a wound. I thought I would die from that sound… But I didn’t die and my legs kept running and running.” (pg 56)
The Mountains in a chapter called “Crunch” use harsh words accompanied by simple drawings to speak to their “earth-shattering” birth, and the impending future once humans are again complacent, “having guzzled my fresh water, when you’ve closed your eyes, and you’ve named your offspring. Then a boom of violence will thunder down, much. older than I, much more infinite than I, much less merciful than I. And it will exert new forces.” (pg 102) With disdain the mountains say, “Nothing lasts very long. Not a thing. Not stillness. Nor calamity. Nor the sea. Nor your ugly little children.” (pg 91) The chapter paints a picture of time and the iterative creation through natural destruction, “The disaster. The next beginning, The nth end. And you will all die. Because nothing lasts long. And no one remembers the name of your children.”
(Many) Impactful Quotes:
On Nature and the Human Condition:
“It is absurd to think yourself superior simply because you are alive. The arrogance of the present makes no sense whatsoever.” OSAM 34
“Is nature wrong? Is it cruel to go to so much trouble, only to put an end to its life in a single stroke? Nature is indifferent. There is no life, no death, there is only a vast and never-ending story, a harmony felt only by fools, artists and saints.” OSAM pg 57
“And though this wound is bleeding in the same way as all wounds bleed, and blood has always been the same, this wound thinks itself unique".” OSAM pg 79
“We also know that each person is a simple little song that, though easily forgotten, has a beautiful refrain.” OSAM pg 119
”You see, our ideas aren’t ours. They never have been. We’ve acquired our most profound beliefs without even realising it. Your identity, the one you’re ready to kill or die for, is a costume stitched together from a thousand rags and scraps.” OSAM pg 160
“People are animals, too, and sometimes we forget that.” WISMD pg 110
On Time:
“Houses, like human hearts, age more in one year when they are empty than they do in twenty with a family inside.” OSAM pg 53
“Everything is happening at this moment and it’s all of equal importance, the only difference being who is telling the story and why. Everything is a miracle.” OSAM pg 91
“They try to imagine the life the old man must have led, and they can’t. They’re still at the beginning of their lives, and peering into the ending makes them feel dizzy.” OSAM pg 93
“Motorways are gigantic, ridiculous arteries that transport too much blood towards a few shriveled-up, greedy and ineffectual organs; cities are nothing but enormous blood clots.” OSAM pg 97
“As the years pass, all living creatures gradually bend down towards the ground, as if the earth is constantly trying to tell them something and they can’t hear it, because life makes us deaf to everything that isn’t life.” OSAM pg 145
“What a shame ‘tis that men are so quickly consumed, and how other men cling to the empty bodies and hide them and bury them to avoid seeing what will also happen to them in time.” WISMD pg 17
On Religion:
“Despite the fact that San Antolín was a fifth-century French martyr and is a well-known patron saint of hunters, the parish church is dedicated to San Antonio, the patron saint of animals. No one ever appeared so see the irony.” OSAM pg 20
“"..eyes shining with devotion, her shriveled fingers counting rosary beads as if they were coins to pay Charon with, so that he would carry her from this valley of tears to a heaven conjured up from a whole host of paradises, fear and ignorance.” OSAM pg 33
“He even felt relieved, as if his own cycle were coming to an end and all humanity were simply an eternal forest where the gods could harvest good timber.” OSAM pg 65
Parting Thoughts
My greatest enjoyment of these two books was going back through the stories, the themes and the quotes in order to write this post. And as as a result, each has grown on me.
