There is a type of literature for which a special sensitivity is required. Nor is that convincing me literature in feminine because that sounds more stale, to other times when women were associated with more frivolous readings. What of Carmen Santos: Maria Dueñas o light gabas (all of them representatives of a specific type of narrative) is a melancholic romanticism that sprinkles everything, from loves and heartbreaks to the brightest costumbrismo with its marked shadows. But always focusing everything on a fast-paced action that awakens contrasts and that captivates the possible future of characters exposed to unpredictable horizons.
Specifying in Carmen Santos that of the action is even more marked than in the other authors mentioned. Because his characters have those edges, that past, those secrets that cast doubt on the development of the events. And because he knows how to outline, in his usual historical setting, the details that best accompany experiences and scenes. A successful balance between fiction and intrahistory that could well be extracted directly from an old sepia photo or from a fascinating portrait of those who seem to be suspended in time.
There are already several novels that make Carmen Santos that reference of that historical-romantic where the romantic term carries a greater meaning, with its original meaning with respect to the storms hovering over souls from the strength of passions, ambitions or whatever another of the powerful engines that move us all.
Top 3 recommended novels by Carmen Santos
Arrabal flower
It was difficult to have heroines for women in my mother's time. Because the female references that were elevated were icons of beauty and apparent submission as maximum values. But within each of those women who found recreation and escape in the artistic facet, many other aspects ended up being distilled that pointed to the subsequent liberation that came also thanks to them and their courage when it came to breaking the canons that prevented them from being entirely them. Just what Flor teaches us in this one, her story.
In the suburb of Zaragoza where she lived, few thought that Flor, that girl born in one of her most humble homes, was destined to become one of the great figures on stage, first in Spain and then throughout Europe. A difficult path, strewn with harsh trials, which leads her first to Madrid and, later, to Barcelona, ​​Paris, Berlin and distant Cuba.
Throughout her career in pursuit of success, Flor discovers love, disappointment, friendship, fear, and obsession. And at the same time, his life is immersed in the convulsive events of the first decades of the XNUMXth century, years marked by anarchist revolts, the rise of fascism and the horror of war. Written with the sensitivity and pulse of the great storytellers, Arrabal flower offers us the story of a brave woman devoted to love, and an exciting portrait of a vibrant and turbulent Europe.
The dream of the Antilles
One of those novels where the Spanish colonial is drawn with that point of nostalgia for a world about to exhaust formulas for coexistence between colonies and old imperial metropolises that have come into disrepair. There was little left to "scratch" politically in those days. Only the ties of human relationships wrote the languid pages of decadence and the new letters of the future on both sides of the Atlantic.
1858. When Valentina set sail from Spain to the Cuban colony in third-class passage, she had a young husband by her side and a heart full of illusions. Upon arrival on the island, however, her dreams are shattered: her husband has died during the exhausting journey and the place, suddenly, is revealed as a hostile environment.
Only Tomás Mendoza, an attractive doctor who was traveling on the same ship as her, tries to help her by proposing to her. But Valentina rejects him out of pride, not willing to inspire pity, even if it means having to sell her body in a refined Caribbean brothel. What he does not suspect is that there are men who are not satisfied with a few hours of bought lust and that some, like the rich and handsome Leopoldo Bazán, hide the most abject cruelty under their chivalrous ways.
With the firm and sagacious pulse of the great novelists, Carmen Santos has woven an unforgettable story that has many of the great sagas. From the streets of Havana to the brothel and from there to the lavish halls of the island's high society, enriched to the unimaginable with the cultivation of sugar cane, The dream of the Antilles tells the story of a woman determined to take charge of her life and shape her own destiny.
A garden among vineyards
The oenological is that ancestral culture around which a unique literature is formed today. Because where we recreate ourselves in search of the alchemy of flavors, we end up magnetizing efforts and passions. The vineyards hold the secrets of the harvests to come. And they will also offer their musts, more or less fine and timely, according to effort, care and circumstances capable of improving everything or ruining it.
Cariñena, 1927. On the death of his father, the victim of a mysterious accident, Rodolfo Montero must return from Paris and take over the family wine business. He is accompanied by his young and pretty wife, Solange, whom he met in the French capital.
The vibrant and bohemian Parisian atmosphere, frequented by artists and writers, has provided Rodolfo with a unique experience and a sweet time full of warm emotions. In Aragonese lands, however, the cold intensifies and sneaks in through the windows of the Casa de la Loma, the Montero mansion that is now revealed before the eyes of the happy couple as an inhospitable mansion that they must share with Dionisio, the Rodolfo's brother. As if that were not enough, the company is almost in ruin, the old quarrels of the people resurface with force and the gossip about the beautiful French girl does not wait.
Overwhelmed by changes and unable to adjust to her new life, Solange begins to feel a dangerous sympathy for her brother-in-law, a tormented man who desperately needs something to restore his will to live. Meanwhile, Rodolfo, pending business and uneasy about certain secrets from the past that insist on returning, does not realize that love, like vines, must be cared for so that it lasts.
