Entering Carmen Laforet’s “Nada,” one goes on a moving adventure with Andrea, a character whose story goes beyond fiction to touch our humanity. Set in post-Civil War Spain, Andrea’s story delves into the landscapes of resilience and the desire for identity, going beyond a simple recounting of historical events. Her struggles to find her place […]
Nada, or Nothing when translated from Spanish, is a heart-wrenching, dramatic novel by Carmen Laforet that details a family’s life in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. Laforet details the class divide, what it means to go hungry, and different kinds of love. We follow Andrea, a student, navigating her strange family and different […]
Nada, a book of madness, trauma and grotesqueness that encase its pages. Nada was a book full of drama, conflict and messiness from all characters. Like Bombal’s novel I found it so hard to like anyone, when I started to like someone or feel sorry for them I would quickly realize that they sucked as …
Questions on Nada
1947 adaptation of Laforet’s novel
This book made me sad, happy and at many points angry at the characters, especially the men. I found myself wanting to know how the events of the story would unfold. This novel was more of what I usually read in terms of structure and style. So far this is the book I have enjoyed […]
This week we were tasked with reading the Soldier of Salamis; I don’t mean to sound harsh, but I just did not enjoy this book. It is a book that disinterested me, was too long, and was kind of confusing at times. I hate to be like this, and will try my best to write […]
It definitely would’ve been to my advantage to know more about history and especially Spanish history to follow this book better. When I’m reading about historical events and names my eyes tend to glaze over and I find myself finishing a page of the book without retaining anything that was written on it. That being […]
Coming from East Asia, I didn’t know much about the Spanish Civil War beforehand, but after reading the book I got a decent level of understanding of the historical event from the information provided in the novel and through my own research. I find the quote “[The Nationalist side] had won the war but lost […]
The Time of the Doves by Mercé Rodoreda is definitely a heart-wrenching book, and challenging to read at times (well, I mean basically all of the time). There is little to be happy about in this book, and the times that are happy, you can probably count on two hands. Nevertheless, I think that the […]
