La Casa en la Playa

by Juan García Ponce

Like waves ebbing and flowing, love surges and subsides among four friends who share a vacation at the house on the beach. As they navigate the seas of love and friendship, jealousy and unfaithfulness, Elena, Marta, Eduardo, and Rafael are swept up in the opposing currents that flow between security and personal freedom, marriage and sexual liberation, family and work, provincial and city life, and traditional and unconventional gender roles. This deceptively simple novel, published in Mexico in 1966 as La casa en la playa and here translated into English for the first time, is an important work by one of Mexico's, and indeed Latin America's, major writers of the twentieth century. Juan García Ponce helped Mexican arts and letters break out of the ossified styles and themes of the post-Revolutionary "Mexican School" with works that explore the conflict between individual desire and the demands of family and work. Written at a turning point in his career, The House on the Beach foreshadows his embrace of the erotic encounter as a means of undermining rigid, socially constructed personal identity. It supports feminist views and probes deeply into the contradictions, backwardness, and progress of modern Mexican society.

284 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Juan García Ponce fue un escritor, ensayista; y crítico literario y de arte mexicano. Hermano del pintor Fernando García Ponce.

Reviews

[Alex Lara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Las descripciones de la costa yucateca, de la naturaleza, el ambiente, los paisajes, el clima, las viviendas, se me hicieron tan precisas y tan detalladas que me sorprendió (no había leído a García Ponce). Con algo de melancolía, pasión y hasta cursilería, la novela se lee bien y se aprecia la atención puesta en los pensamientos de la narradora. Que la historia sea contada por una mujer, siendo el escritor un hombre, fue interesante y novedoso para mí,

[Nell Olan · Rating 2 out of 5]

It just wasn't my genre. This was very normal. Felt like something I have lived as an outsider looking into a friends life. I like to get out of my world.