Camellia Street - Hardcover

Rodoreda, Merce

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 155597192X ISBN 13: 9781555971922

Publisher: Graywolf Pr, 1993

Synopsis

Paralyzing claustrophobia, petty suspicion and spying, stifled daydreaming, and male brutality make up the life of a working woman in war-torn Barcelona during the 1940s and 1950s.

About this title

Language Notes:

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Catalan

From Booklist:

Rodoreda was a best-selling Catalan writer whose fiction has all too infrequently been translated into English. Here, American readers are introduced to Rodoreda's life, which was profoundly affected by Franco's repression of Catalan culture, in a foreword by Sandra Cisneros, who writes with her characteristically poetic verve, and in a fine introduction by Rodoreda's talented translator. Reading Camellia Street, the story of a foundling named Cecilia, is a galvanizing experience. Although her saviors raise her lovingly, if insensitively, Cecilia can never get over her longing for knowledge about her origins. She grows up to be beautiful and strangely passive, a sort of night-blooming flower picked and then discarded by men. Cecilia relays her enigmatic life story in a hypnotic and almost surreal stream of consciousness, methodically recounting her abusive yet mercenary relationships with a series of lovers. Rodoreda brilliantly captures the miasma of Barcelona during the embattled 1940s and 1950s, all the while generating an astonishing lexicon of meaningful images, from a glass heart to a cuckoo clock featuring a man and a woman repeatedly rushing toward each other only to be deflected and sent into separate cells. This is a haunting tale of the heart's capacity for survival under circumstances of nearly overwhelming malice and indifference. Donna Seaman

About this edition

• Publisher: Graywolf Pr
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 155597192X
• ISBN 13: 9781555971922
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 186