Recent fiction: Barcelona Dreaming & Widowland
Both the above two books – written by Rupert Thomson and C.L. Carey – were favourably reviewed but I had not heard of either author.
Barcelona Dreaming is three interlocking short stories set in modern Barcelona.
In the first Amy, who has a curio shop, meets a young Moroccan outside her apartment block who turns out to be a rent boy.
They have a physical relationship – he is many years her senior.
The story takes a savage twist when a racist neighbour hits the boy with his stick, gets pushed over by Amy and dies under a car.
The story is beautifully observed, reflecting Thomson’s deftness at characterisation.
The second features Nacho, an alcoholic musician who is the first husband of Amy’s best friend Montse.
He befriends Ronaldinho who asks him to give Spanish conversation lessons. Nacho has a Brazilian girlfriend Christiani who has a young son Ari.
The depiction of Ronaldinho is interesting both as a glamourous and hugely talented footballer but also his more private self.
This story also features Vic Drago, a shady tycoon who features in his third story.
This features translator Jordi who is in love with Mareia but whose neighbour is Vic. His publisher is Montse. It’s an odd gothic story of neo-reality with a strange furniture maker called Daniel Federnmann.
I enjoyed this one the best.
Thomson shows, by linking the stories, that short story writing can have depth. His description of contemporary Barcelona – warts and all – but not its tourist haunts like the Ranblas is graphic.
I will certainly read more of him.
I wish I could be as praiseworthy of Widowland.
This is set in 1953 when Britain is a Nazi Protectorate under Alfred Rosenberg in what is called the Alliance – one of the many weaknesses of the novel is we are not informed how this arrived.
The novel also bears startling resemblance to 1984 and Brave New World. For Victory Gin reads Alliance Gin, just as Winston Smith hides his journal so does the central character Rose who is having an affaire with a German high-ranking officer Martin Kreuz in the Ministry of Culture where she works “correcting” novels for the Nazi ideology.
The classification of women in accordance with their contribution to society has all the features of the caste structure in Brave New World. The widows who live in Widowland, Oxford are the lowest caste as they cannot procreate but bizarrely they can paint graffiti against the Protectorate all over the country.
Nor is the theme of a Nazi occupied Britain original.
It featured in the film It Happened Here, Len Deighton’s SS/GB and C. J. Sansom’s Dominion.
The critics liked it but none I read commented on the points I raise.
I wonder why.
