War, So Much War in The Mookse and the Gripes

Oct 12, 2019 L.S. Popovich rated it really liked it

Shelves: rare-gems, 2019, 4-star, open-letter-press, catalan

War, Not Much War.
The War in this book is there, but it doesn't take center stage. Instead, it provides a backdrop and an excuse for commentary and tension. While I found the scenarios making up the wild and inventive vignettes of this novel intriguing and beautifully composed, they were so disconnected and random at times, that my interest wavered. It was only possible to get a sense of place and time when the protagonist was not in the midst of surreal cruelty and all-too-human suffering. Indi ...more

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Apr 27, 2016 jeremy rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, translation

even if we win this war it'll be as though we've lost it, the way a war is set up, everyone loses.

published a few years before she passed away in 1980 of liver cancer, mercè rodoreda's war, so much war (quanta, quanta guerra...) is a picaresque bildungsroman of great sorrow. set in catalonia, the author's home region, war, so much war follows young adrià and his itinerant wanderings through war-scarred towns, villages, and countryside, encountering a surfeit of horrors tempered by the occasi

even if we win this war it'll be as though we've lost it, the way a war is set up, everyone loses.

published a few years before she passed away in 1980 of liver cancer, mercè rodoreda's war, so much war (quanta, quanta guerra...) is a picaresque bildungsroman of great sorrow. set in catalonia, the author's home region, war, so much war follows young adrià and his itinerant wanderings through war-scarred towns, villages, and countryside, encountering a surfeit of horrors tempered by the occasional kindness.

some kind of animal drew near me. i turned over with a moan. the animal didn't budge. i stretched out my arm to touch it and felt an icy hand: i was lying next to a dead soldier. my bones ached, but i made an effort to overcome the pain and attempted to roll farther down the bank. the reeds stopped me. it was drizzling. i was starting to fall asleep, i couldn't understand why everything that was good in this world had abandoned me.

the brutality of adrià's experiences, despite being mostly removed from the actual fighting itself, convey the torments and forced indifferences of war quite well, and with her evocative and unabashed imagery, rodoreda lays bare the wasteland that is war – all the while foregoing even a whiff of moralizing. with fantastical elements interplaying with the abundant barbarity and atrocities aplenty, war, so much war paints a stark picture of a conflict destined to conclude with, indeed, everyone losing. war is hell, as the old saying goes, yet rodoreda is able to amply portray the pockets of beauty, hope, and generosity which thrive amidst scenes otherwise dominated by bloodshed and belligerence.

i would return bearing mountains of memories of all the people i had met, people who had been born and had lived so that i might know them, and they would accompany me for the rest of my journey... so many sweet eyes, so many sad eyes, so many surprised eyes, so many desperate eyes... would the remembrance of evil dissipate or would i carry it with me always, like a malady of the soul?

*translated from the catalan by maruxa relaño (imma monsó) and martha tennent (rodoreda's death in spring and the selected stories) ...more

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May 29, 2015 Melissa rated it liked it

Adrià Guinart lives in Barcelona with his mother and adopted younger sister. But at the first chance he gets he leaves his home and joins an unnamed war that is ravaging the countryside. He is only fifteen-years-old and what he sees while the war is raging forms the bulk of this bizarre and surreal narrative. The book almost reads like a series of shorts stories, each of which is based on a different character that Adria meets while he is away from home at war.

There is very little fighting or wa Adrià Guinart lives in Barcelona with his mother and adopted younger sister. But at the first chance he gets he leaves his home and joins an unnamed war that is ravaging the countryside. He is only fifteen-years-old and what he sees while the war is raging forms the bulk of this bizarre and surreal narrative. The book almost reads like a series of shorts stories, each of which is based on a different character that Adria meets while he is away from home at war.

There is very little fighting or war that Adria actually sees while he is roaming the countryside. He stumbles upon the after affects of the war by meeting some wretched people along the way. He meets a woman named Eva who is a miller’s daughter. The book reads like a fantasy and sometimes the story is very disjointed and his episode with a woman named Eva is a perfect example. As he is wading in a river with her for a while he learns that she is a miller’s daughter. Their time together is very brief and when he parts from her he makes his way to the mill that her father owns. At the mill he is tied up and beaten by the miller and eventually escapes. He later meets up with Eva again, which second encounter seems even more random than the first. They have a brief conversation and she leaves him again.

Another strange episode that Adria experiences takes place at a farmhouse that he stumbles upon in the woods. When he first sees the owner of the house he is mercilessly beating his dog who has stolen a morsel of food. The farmer explains that there is nothing in this world that he despises more than a thief and so he unleashes his anger on the family pet. Adria stays with the farmer and his family for about two weeks doing chores for them in exchange for food and shelter. One night the farmer’s daughters take Adria to a hidden pantry where Adria steals a ham. When the farmer finds the ham, Adria suffers the same type of vicious beating that the dog received. At this point he is forced to leave the farmhouse and once again roam the countryside.

The randomness and lack of smooth transitions from one scene to the next give the book a dreamlike quality. It’s as if we have a front row seat to a viewing of Adria’s never ending nightmare. Adria comes upon a castle whose owner has been tied up and held hostage in his own home. He then wanders off once again and finds a girl on a beach who pledges her undying loyalty to him. When he rejects her, she walks into the sea and commits suicide. While walking along the sea Adria encounters a beach house where the owner welcomes him and feeds him. He ends up staying with the man who owns the beach house, Senyor Ardevol, for weeks and when the man dies he leaves his home and his possessions to Adria.

For the second part of the book Adria meets a series of interesting characters on the road whose stories are told in greater length. Adria starts with Ardevol’s story and how he came to live in the beach house and how he came to see the strange image in the mirror in his foyer. Adria also meets a cat man, a hermit and a man with a never-ending appetite, all of whom have strange tales to tell. Even with the shift of focus in the book from Adria himself to the people he meets on the road, the stories in the second part of the book are just as fantastical and surreal as Adria’s experiences in the first part.

I have mixed feelings about this book but I think that is due to my preference for more realistic fiction. The overall idea of the book is interesting but some of the shorter encounters of the main character, especially in the first half of the book, did not keep my attention. Has anyone else read any other books by Mercè Rodoreda? I am wondering if they are similar to this title.
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