Stories have to start somewhere, but even stories have stories. To answer the question of “backstories”, and how important they are to novels, well they are quite significant, even if not directly shown. For example, to understand the atrocious history of the Spanish Civil War, we find a backstory to give context to Andrea, our […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with blog, memory, reality, trauma, Uncategorized
At the beginning of the book, I was immediately hit by the environment and emotions of Andrea who was arriving in Barcelona with lots of hope. Soon after arriving the harsh atmosphere of the home created by her relatives became clear. The home was small, but was heavy with tension that I found myself finding […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with nada, Uncategorized
Reading Nada honestly felt kind of heavy, but in a way that stuck with me. It follows Andrea, a young woman who moves to Barcelona after the Spanish Civil War to start university. She shows up excited and hopeful, imagining this new chapter of her life, and then almost immediately that optimism gets crushed. The […]
Posted in Blogs, Laforet | Tagged with Barcelona, Carmen laforet, nada, Spain, Uncategorized, war
Reading Nada felt less like reading a novel and more like being dropped into someone else’s extremely tense family group chat, except it’s set in postwar Barcelona and everyone is emotionally unwell in a deeply artistic way. What got me wasn’t the plot (which I’ll spare you), but the feeling of the book: that constant […]
Posted in Blogs, Laforet | Tagged with nada, Uncategorized, war
I think Nada was an interesting read and surprisingly I actually enjoyed reading it. The book starts off with Andrea arriving in Barcelona with a lot of hope in the middle of the night, which is later than her relatives had expected her to come. However, this hope and the positive feeling about her future […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with Uncategorized
When I first finished Nada, my immediate reaction was kind of anticlimactic. After a full year of Andrea’s life in Barcelona, she leaves feeling like she’s taken nothing away from the experience. She didn’t have a crazy transformation, didn’t really take away a clear lesson, and the story ended with no dramatic resolution. Just… nada. […]
Posted in Blogs, Laforet | Tagged with death, memory, Uncategorized, war
This time, I would recommend reading Nada when you are already feeling a lil… empty, it goes well with some mellow-ish tunes. This is not a comforting book and I do not think it is meant to be. Laforet does not guide you gently through Andrea’s life, she drops you into it and lets you […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with book-review, books, fiction, review, Uncategorized, writing
Even though I am shocked, I feel bad for Agostino too… From the beginning, I could tell the story started to go in a weird direction, especially when I read the depiction of how he feels proud of the attention his mother receives and the envy he imagines from others. And he feel disappointed when […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with grow up, Uncategorized
Agostino……… I guess I should be thinking with an open mind and critically or whatever… But I cannot stand these nasty boys! From literally the first few pages I was already uncomfortable. Why are these boys always so obsessed with their moms.? Like okay. From the first page I already knew what I was getting … Continue reading YUCK
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with childhood, class, family, lust, Uncategorized
While reading Agostino, I kept having this strong feeling that the novel is full of GAZES. It never explicitly talks about “looking” or “being seen,” yet almost every uncomfortable moment in the story seems to come back to it. Even the setting already hints at this. The story took place on a beach, which may […]
Posted in Blogs, Moravia | Tagged with Agostino, family, Gaze, relationships, Uncategorized
