Fortunata and Jacinta

This easily stands comparison with Dickens, Balzac, or Tolstoy. I am ashamed I had never heard of the author until very recently. There are two particularly difficult problems facing the translator: how to render the very varied narrative register of characters from a wide social range, and how to deal with the subtleties of tu/usted. In the first case, some of the more plebeian voices speak with American vulgarisms which some may find odd or grating (although they serve the purpose). In the second case, we just get footnotes pointing out when the original Spanish changes. This is useful - and probably the only way to render it in English - but it also has the effect of making me regret that modern English, with only one word for "you", must miss out on a great deal of subtlety - which the author uses here, to great effect. (The Portuguese are even luckier - they have eight different ways to say "you"... how monochrome our language seems in comparison....)

Such a good yarn. Really enjoyed this. If you like Zola and Hardy then you will probably like this too.

This is a definitive 19th century Spanish realism novel by Galdos (author of ‘That Bringas Woman’). It is a huge book in 4 sections over 816 pages of small font. It took me 5 weeks to read this Dickensian length story – however it has to be said this is not a particularly dynamic or innovative story. This is more an in depth character analysis of two different women sharing the same man; it is mainly dialogue more than naturalist realism that fills the bulk of the text i.e more Middlemarch than Germinal.The entire story can be summarised as: middle class Stanta Cruz, after using lower class Fortunata, marries Jacinta. Childless Stanta Cruz again takes up with the now married Fortunata. The usual questions arise: Who goes mad, dies for lack of modern medicine and who’s baby? Clearly there is a whole universe (Madrid) of uncles, relations, work, children, politics and friends which gives immense depth to the narrative.For me some noteworthy points with the book are that the translation has some modern American appearing phrases which very occasionally grated with me; the translation included the F word. The translator helpfully provides notes on the you (tu and usted) choices at key moments. And most interestingly a significant character had suffered breast cancer and a mastectomy – not something I recall every appearing in the type of books I read.I can give this 4 stars mainly for this study in novel realism and historical placement. The story could certainly do with more memorable or passionate scenes but despite that it kept my interest to the very end.

Agnes Moncy Gullón's translation is exceptional, a real labour of love. Yes the dialogue is in American (mostly very discreet), but rendering Galdos' masterpiece in Victorian English would be a pallid disaster. As it is, this wonderfully zestful and dramatic Fortunata and Jacinta invites us to look forward to Crane and Norris and Joyce rather than back to Balzac and Dickens.This is a huge book, and not a quick read. It is deeply unusual in some ways. The story is both gripping and undramatic. In some ways I'd want to call it primarily a comic novel, though it's constantly seamed by tragedy. It has a mass of wonderful characters (more rounded than Joyce, more real than Dickens); Galdos' portraits are of how they think, not just how they speak. Let's see if I can pick out three of my favourites, the sponger Juan Pablo Rubín, the rich anglophile idler Moreno, and of course the ultimate wrong-side-of-the-tracks heroine Fortunata.JUAN PABLO: In the last weeks of '74, Rubín began to crave books again. He wanted to educate himself at all costs; a hard vast task, considering that he had no foundation on which to build. His father has instilled in him the notion that Latin gets in a businessman's way, and, acting on this, he had forbidden his son to learn anything beyond basic arithmetic and little French. Juan Pablo didn't have a library of his own; a friend lent him books. He went to see him, chose the books whose titles intrigued him most, and devoted every moment he had -- except for the time he spent in the café or sleeping -- to reading. He acquired so many ideas that he had an urge to spew them all out, in propaganda. Either he preached or he'd burst. What a pity he didn't go back to Pedemero's tertulia to slay him! He knew enough now to tear every single theologian to shreds. (p. 452)MORENO "Do you know what irritates me most in Spain among other things? That habit that servants have of singing while they work. You'd think that in my own home I'd be free of this torment. Well, I'm not. My Aunt Guillermina has a little maid whose got a mouth like a couple of street bands. It's useless to tell her to be quiet. She obeys for ten minutes and then suddenly breaks out again with her 'el señor alcalde mayor.' She says she forgets to keep quiet. Believe me, I feel like bashing her head in.""You don't mean to suggest that in other countries --! But Manolo . . .""Oh, no, my lady. You may be sure that if a servant so much as dared to sing in London she'd be thrown out immediately. They wouldn't even think of it there.""I believe you. They're such wet noodles, the English.""This roguish race of ours simply doesn't value time or silence. You'll never be able to get it across to these people that whoever starts shouting or singing when I'm writing, or when I'm thinking, or sleeping is stealing something from me. It's a lack of civilization, just like any other. Taking over someone else's silence is just like stealing a coin from someone else's pocket." (p. 668)FORTUNATA: Her marriage, her husband, the Micaelas -- all this had receded into the distance, become so incredibly remote that it was beyond her mind's grasp. Her lover said in an enticing voice:"We have so much to talk about!"And she was overtaken by convulsive laughter."Ha, ha, ha -- three years! No, longer. It's been longer because -- ha, ha, ha -- see how I'm trembling? I don't know what's wrong with me. Yes, it's been longer, because when I was here with Juárez el Negro, I saw you, yet I didn't really, with him always there. And one day when I told him I loved you he pulled a big knife on me -- ha, ha, ha -- and he wanted to kill me. I was dying to talk to you, and him saying no, no . . . Our little baby dead and I was even deader -- ha, ha -- and in Barcelona I thought of you and blew kisses to you, and in Zaragoza I blew more kisses to you -- ha, ha -- and in Madrid it was the same. And when they put me in the convent, too -- blowing kisses to you -- and you never giving me a thought, you cad."... Her feverish chill suddenly became burning heat, and the convulsive laughter, a flood of tears."This isn't a time to cry; it's time to be happy.""Do you know what I'm remembering? My little baby boy -- he was so cute. If he'd lived, you would've loved him, wouldn't you? I can see them now, taking him away in that little blue coffin. It was the same night that Juárez el Negro pulled that big knife on me and said, in that booming voice of his, 'Humph! It's eight o'clock. Do all your praying now, 'cause I'm going to kill you before nine.' He was in a jealous rage. I was scared to death.""We've got so much to tell each other! Both of us. I already know you got married. You did the right thing."This "you did the right thing" fell on Fortunata's heart like a cold drop . . . (p.404)Some of these characters went on to appear in other Galdos novels -- for instance there's a whole series about Dona Lupe's friend, the usurer Torquemada. Not much chance finding English translations of other Galdos novels, though. But at least we've got the big one.

I agree whole-heartedly with the reviewer who said that the American translation was too modern. Unfortunately, I didn't realise that translation was the Penguin one. The dialogue is truly awful, with horrible grating Americanisms like 'I don't want to talk about it. Period', 'you guys', 'Oh boy, was I hungry' etc. I do understand the difficulty translators have in trying to recreate the tone of colloquialisms and slang in another language, and it's possible that these wouldn't jar so much on an American reader, but for me it was like finding myself in an episode of Friends rather than nineteenth century Madrid. Elsewhere the translation is good, in the descriptive passages for example, but the dialogue was so hard to stomach for me that I actually had to put the book on one side, something I rarely do. It's a shame, because Penguin's translations are usually excellent. It's difficult to know what rating to give it, as I didn't finish it, but I can't give it a high rating due to the translation. I suppose I'll just have to work on my Spanish!

Helps very much with my graduate class

I wish it came with reading glasses. Only the Bible is in smaller print. Maybe the story deserves 5 stars but the “product”(book) gets 3 from me.