The suggestive mixture of the historical and the intrahistoric seduces any reader with that theatricality of what was witnessed in the first person to become, precisely, a more complete History.
The survivors of any nearby period, but subjected to very different circumstances, are those theater characters who intervene very close to us, who tell us about their pains and glories, who transmit the ultimate truth of the testimony distilled from the facts.
And nobody better than Soledad Puertolas, with that handling of the plot intimacy turned into a plot towards the emotions, for an invitation to the world of the second half of the XNUMXth century. From the focus of the Spanish future, with its fratricidal war and its subsequent dictatorship, we travel with three women who take us from the most violent Spain first and then retrograde, to other historical contexts of a world that does not mark a very different evolution. as for endless conflicts; Attacked from some fronts or others, by some political proposals or others.
Exciting testimonies from a twentieth century in which History followed one another as an alternation of interests that never finished clearing horizons and in whose days living was always an adventure with dark perspectives of tragedy.
On the personal scale, the panorama was limited to those world ups and downs between ideologies that were campaigning from one country to another, moving hearts towards revolutions that were finally stifled in the most resounding failure; or towards the worst of the badly managed success decays.
But it is easy to guess that it is enriched by a narrative like this one about factions, violence, war drums or thriving economic interests, it is always that human side that ends up being misplaced among so many Manichean tensions. The souls of three leading women are in charge of converting history into experiences, impressions, emotions, in that flash of humanity facing the abyss. Elvira, Alba and Valentina compose their overtures of what they have to live and declaim aloud the arias of their circumstances, between dialogues even with their own soul between choruses of wars that never stop playing in the background.
In the end, the most exciting intra-stories end up exceeding the dimension of any context. And the most fascinating acts of what happened are almost never included in the official scripts. Love, guilt, despair and a return to hope have no possible chronicle.
And this is how we have to give thanks to novels like this one, in which literature once again takes the leading role of the essentially human.
You can now buy the novel Opera Music, by Soledad Puértolas, here: