In his meritorious literary evolution, Almudena Grandes he played various keys of an always intense narrative. It is not the same to approach a plot with erotic overtones or focus on vindictive aspects or start with a historical fiction. And it certainly never seemed to be a matter of marketing impositions but of creative impulses with which the author conquered so many readers.
Here is a recent edition that summarizes his great novels of shared scenery around the anti-Franco resistance:
But it is that a work recognized by hand and extended for more than 40 years is configured in that condition of chronicle, of complementary and necessary vision of the passing of our days. If writers can have a function of attesting to what happened as chroniclers of their time, Almudena Grandes he succeeded with his mosaic of unpredictable plots. Intra-stories from here and there with that rabid realism of the nearby characters.
To empathize with so many and so many protagonists born from the imaginary of Almudena Grandes You just have to discover them in their details and silences, in their juicy dialogues and in that heavy misfortune of losers in need of voices that turn them into everyday heroes, into survivors who love, feel and suffer to a greater extent than so many other characters so favored. for the opulence as unaware of that real life where the certain things happen that the soul takes.
Top 3 recommended books of Almudena Grandes
The ages of Lulu
How can we not highlight this book published at the end of the 80s. An erotic novel, published by a woman... Surely in those years there would still be a multitude of spaces in which such an action would be violent depending on what morals. But the novel triumphed, it was translated into many languages and made into a film.
Placing an erotic novel at the top of any writer's ranking may not seem very academic, but its meaning, its scope and its undeniable literary quality deserve it. Sex is also a very relevant way towards self-knowledge…
Still immersed in the fears of a childhood devoid of affection, Lulu, a fifteen-year-old girl, succumbs to the attraction exerted on her by a young man, a friend of the family, whom until then she had vaguely desired. After this first experience, Lulú, eternal girl, feeds for years, alone, the ghost of that man who ends up accepting the challenge of prolonging indefinitely, in her peculiar sexual relationship, the love game of childhood.
Create for her a world apart, a private universe where time loses value. But the risky spell of living out of reality is abruptly broken one day, when Lulu, already thirty years old, rushes, helplessly but feverishly, into the hell of dangerous desires »
The frozen heart
Almost 1.000 fascinating pages to delve into a unique life. When Julio Carrión dies, his life story blends in with the post-war history of Spain. On the day of his death, Julio Carrión, a powerful businessman whose fortune dates back to the years of Francoism, leaves his children a substantial inheritance but also many dark points from his past and from his experience in the Civil War and in the Blue Division.
At his funeral, in February 2005, his son Álvaro, the only one who has not wanted to dedicate himself to family business, is surprised by the presence of a young and attractive woman, whom no one had seen before and who seems to reveal unknown aspects of the intimate life of his father.
Raquel Fernández Perea, for her part, daughter and granddaughter of exiles in France, knows, however, almost everything about the past of her parents and grandparents, whom she has asked about their experience of war and exile. For her, only one story remains unclear: that of an afternoon in which she accompanied her grandfather, who had recently returned to Madrid, and they visited some strangers with whom she sensed that there was an outstanding debt.
Álvaro and Raquel are condemned to meet because their respective family histories, which are also the history of many families in Spain, from the Civil War to the Transition, are part of themselves and also explain their origins, their present. Also because, without knowing it, they will be attracted without remedy.
Malena is a tango name
Malena and Lulú have quite a few aspects in common. Both are those girls from imperfect pasts, full of complexes or feelings of defeat for being simply women.
In this case, this novel about Malena reached the same or greater level of recognition. «Malena is twelve years old when she receives, without reason, and without any right, from her grandfather the last treasure that the family keeps: an ancient, uncut emerald, which she will never be able to talk about because one day it will save her life. .
From then on, that disoriented and perplexed girl, who silently prays to become a child because she senses that she will never be able to look like her twin sister, Reina, the perfect woman, begins to suspect that she is not the first Fernández de Alcántara unable to find the right right place in the world.
He then intends to unravel the labyrinth of secrets that beats under the peaceful skin of his family, an exemplary bourgeois family from Madrid. In the shadow of an old curse, Malena learns to look at herself, as in a mirror, in the memory of those who thought they were cursed before her and discovers, as she reaches maturity, a reflection of her fears and her love in the succession of imperfect women who have preceded her.
Other interesting books by Almudena Grandes...
Frankenstein's mother
In 1954, the young psychiatrist Germán Velázquez returned to Spain to work in the women's asylum in Ciempozuelos, south of Madrid. After going into exile in 1939, he has lived in Switzerland for fifteen years, hosted by the family of Dr. Goldstein. In Ciempozuelos, Germán meets Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira, a paranoid parricide, extremely intelligent, who fascinated him at thirteen, and meets a nursing assistant, María Castejón, whom Doña Aurora taught to read and write when she was a child .
Germán, attracted to María, does not understand her rejection, and suspects that his life hides many secrets. The reader will discover her modest origin as the granddaughter of the asylum gardener, her years as a maid in Madrid, her unfortunate love story, as well as the reasons why Germán has returned to Spain. Twin souls who want to flee from their respective pasts, Germán and María want to give themselves a chance, but they live in a humiliated country, where sins become crimes, and puritanism, the official morality, covers up all kinds of abuses and outrages.
For me personally, and by far, the novel that I liked the most is "Los aires Difficult" which, despite its 600 pages, flew by me
Thank you very much for commenting, Ignacio.
I liked the ages of Lulu, the frozen heart impressed me and I became an admirer. The first characters of the Episodes of an Endless War (Inés and Nino) made me unconditional. All the best.
Thank you very much for your contribution, Czeska.