Since that moment when a shepherd revealed to Oedipus his true origin in Sophocles’ tragedy, with known consequences, the turbulent reappearance of the family past in the life of a character, providing new clues to already distant events, has constituted a nutritious literary resource.
In recent times we have had periods of literature with more political, customary or social criticism, but that of surprising family content is currently in very good health, in tune with an environment where therapies such as Family Constellations have more and more adepts. Three novels read recently confirm this to me.
The German author Bernhard Schlink (Bielefeld, 1944), who served a long period as a federal judge, has stood out with a series of works in which he precisely connects sociopolitical experiences with their long-term emotional echo. The best known, The Reader, was made into a film by Stephen Daldry with a splendid Kate Winslet in the lead role. Published regularly in Spain by Anagrama, I especially liked its Weekend where a group of former extreme left militants meet in the countryside many years later to put their past and present in order.
Schlink is now publishing The Granddaughter. Birgit and Kaspar fell in love in the 60s; He lived in West Berlin, she in communist Germany. Birgit escaped from the GDR to start a new life in the democratic and capitalist area. When, five decades later, she dies, her husband finds among her papers – to her surprise – the revelation that Birgit had had a daughter, whom he left behind.
The novel deals with Kaspar’s current encounter, in a long-reunified Germany, with this family that is and is not his: with the daughter, Svenja, an unattractive character, and above all with the granddaughter Sigrun who gives the title. Schlink demands the reader’s usual suspension of disbelief (it’s hard to believe that Birgit could have carried another man’s pregnancy to term while she was dating Kaspar without him finding out about her, even though they lived far away from her).
It also intensifies the ideological load: the bookseller Kaspar is an old leftist, his new family is in communion with the extreme right that appeared in the former communist bloc. It is striking that Schlinck’s story connects with those of other Anagram authors such as Julian Barnes or Ian McEwan, who in recent novels address the personal review of the past and the “what could have happened if…” at a late age, let’s say. . The intergenerational dialogue between stepgrandfather and granddaughter is especially attractive here.
Also in Jacobo Bergareche’s new work The Farewells, (Books of the Asteroid) there is a surprise making its way from past times. The author of the celebrated The Perfect Days, born in London in 1976, now takes us to Menorca where a wealthy professional, Diego, spends the summer holidays with his family. One day he sees in the port the woman with whom he had a brief relationship seventeen years ago during a music festival, the Burning Man in Albacete.
I cannot explain more without revealing things (let’s avoid the term spoiler), but The Farewells seemed to me to be a well-rounded and elegantly written novel – 166 pages – about what Charles Dickens could call “the solid ghost of past relationships.”
If in the case of Schlink and Bergareche we come across characters whose appearance was not planned and who are disconcerting, the opposite occurs in the highly recommended novel by Alma Delia Murillo (Ciudad Nezahiualcóyotl, 1979) The Head of My Father, published by Alfaguara, which It is among the best-selling and most commented books in Mexico this year.
The narrator of this energetic autofiction embarks on a truck trip across her country to find the parent who abandoned them (her, her mother, and her seven siblings!), and the journey gives rise to successive perfectly linked flash backs. . They reveal an admirable woman who overcomes successive setbacks, some very hard, without losing her sense of humor, until she carves out a destiny and a career. The father abandoned them, yes, but he left a story to tell; and her mother gave her permission to narrate it. The text, she points out, “he is my son, he is your grandson.” And she concludes it with a crazy ending: “Fuck you and rest in peace. I love you dad”.
