Paradise lost

Mono­logues

The novel is struc­tured as a se­ries of inner mono­logues. Chirbes takes us into the thoughts and feel­ings of each main char­ac­ter in turn, first Rubén, then Mónica, his 29-year-old sec­ond wife. This struc­ture means that read­ers see char­ac­ters’ voices, fears and am­bi­tion from the in­side. Thus Mónica is not only a rich old man’s play-thing but also smart and not un­kind. Though Chirbes spares none of his char­ac­ters, he wants read­ers to un­der­stand them: no-one is good here, but none are all evil.

The mono­logues of Col­lado, Rubén’s for­mer fixer, who is hung up on a Russ­ian pros­ti­tute and is in hos­pi­tal with mul­ti­ple burns after an at­tempt on his life, shows us the vi­o­lent past when Rubén climbed by tram­pling on laws and any­one who stood in his way, a past that Rubén is try­ing to put be­hind him now he is rich. He wants a peace­ful life in his lux­ury villa with clas­si­cal music and a young wife. Col­lado re­calls Rubén ex­plain­ing: “We played it dirty for a time... we did what we had to do... what those clas­si­cal econ­o­mists used to call prim­i­tive ac­cu­mu­la­tion of cap­i­tal, the coun­try had to es­tab­lish a new class after Franco” (p.47). Rubén’s self-jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is bull­shit: in re­al­ity there was no “new class” after Franco, but the same old rul­ing class in dif­fer­ent cloth­ing. There is some truth, though, in Rubén’s self-de­ceit, for in the tur­bu­lent years after Franco there was room for some so­cial mo­bil­ity: space for ruth­less op­por­tunists like Rubén.

De­spair­ing Nos­tal­gia

The mono­logues con­tinue. The art re­storer Sil­via, Rubén’s daugh­ter and a dozen years older than his wife, has signed a pe­ti­tion against her fa­ther’s de­struc­tion of Mis­ent. She is near ner­vous break­down. Ap­pro­pri­ately she is trapped in traf­fic, while wor­ry­ing about her lover, her hus­band Juan, a lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor, and her teenage daugh­ter Miriam, spoilt by her grand­fa­ther Rubén and to­tally out of con­trol.

Matías, the corpse that haunts the novel, the pro­fes­sor Juan, Sil­via and the nov­el­ist in de­cline Brouard, old friend of the Bar­tomeu fam­ily, are in­tel­lec­tu­als, which al­lows Chirbes to dis­cuss nu­mer­ous sub­jects: lit­er­a­ture, ar­chi­tec­ture, art restora­tion, sex, cli­mate break­down, air­ports, pros­ti­tu­tion, etc.. Don’t think cul­ture makes any­one a bet­ter per­son. His char­ac­ters are all dri­ven by base emo­tions.

It is a de­spair­ing novel. Rafael Chirbes piles de­tail on de­tail in his lament for the ruin of the coast: not just the ugly build­ings, rub­bish and traf­fic-jams, but the smells of sun lo­tion, petrol and junk food. He’s strong on smells, which trig­ger mem­ory and trans­mit nos­tal­gia. Sil­via’s hus­band Juan riffs:

“Mis­ent’s re­cent his­tory... starts in par­adise and ends in hell... nearly de­serted beaches with shells and starfish left by the tide, sea­horses, dried sponges, the smell of rot­ting ma­rine grass, algae dry­ing in the sun, de­com­pos­ing fish... a Mis­ent that no longer ex­ists, it was forced out by all the de­vel­op­ing, the necks of build­ing cranes criss­cross­ing the sky, the half-paved streets” (pp.78-9).

Mem­o­ries of a lost past and fears of a worse fu­ture per­me­ate the novel. As well as the pub­lic cor­rup­tion and its un­der­ly­ing vi­o­lence, its char­ac­ters’ souls are cor­roded. It is a bit­ter and truth­ful book.