Reviews

Primera memoria by Ana María Matute

literaltrash's review against another edition

reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

ostrowk's review against another edition

Loved the dawning politics of our young narrator and her relationship with Manuel, and I wished María Matute had focused on those elements even more.

montagves's review against another edition

4.0

No sé por qué, pero a lo largo de todo el libro el personaje que más me ha llamado la atención ha sido Lauro, el Chino. Sin duda, lo que más me ha gustado ha sido toda esa forma tan característica que tiene Matute de elaborar a sus personajes.

nixholson's review against another edition

emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

jimmylorunning's review against another edition

5.0

A tiny green lizard came out from under a stone. The two of us remained very quiet looking at it. Our eyes were close to the ground and, from between the grasses, the lizard looked at us. His tiny eyes, like pinheads, were sharp and terrible. For moments it seemed like the awful dragon of Saint George, in the stained-glass window of Santa Maria. I said to myself: "He belongs among the men: the ugly things of men and women." And I was at the point of growing and changing into a woman. Or probably I already was. My hands felt cold, in the midst of the heat. "No, no, let them wait a little longer... a little longer." But who had to wait? It was I, only I, who was a traitor to myself at every turn. It was I, I myself, and no one else, who was betraying Gorogo and the Island of Never-Never. I thought: "What kind of monster am I now?" I closed my eyes in order not to feel the tiny-but-enormous look of the dragon of Saint George. "What kind of monster am I that I no longer have my childhood, and am still far from being, in any way, a woman?"

Matute draws out the past, summoning details out of deep recesses, out of a well where a rotting carcass of a dog has been thrown. Each image gleams magical and bright green, the green that says “not yet ripe,” surrounding me with her landscape of sun scorched slopes washed up by the sea, and amidst it all, that stifling sense that something is quietly wrong. Something is lurking, is toxic within every house, broodingly polite as adults are, where nothing is talked about, yet children know even without knowing, picking it up themselves, they re-enact those same cruelties to scale, also without knowing. But who's to say adults know them better?

There, on the loggia, I clutched my small Negrito who had been mine for as long as I could remember. It was this doll I had taken with me to Our Lady of the Angels, the one the assistant headmistress tried to throw in the rubbish, so that I had kicked her and been expelled. This was the doll I sometimes called Gorogo--and it was for him that I drew miniature cities in the corners and margins of my books, invented at the point of my pen, with winding spiral staircases, sharpened cupolas, bell towers, and asymmetrical nights--and whom at other times I simply called Negrito, and who was only an unfortunate boy who cleaned chimneys in a very far-off city in a Hans Christian Andersen story.

Turned against everyone, when I returned in the Leontina--banished for being a girl (not even a woman, not even that) from the excursion to Naranjal--against all of them, I went up to my room, and took my small Negrito out from under the handkerchiefs and socks, stared into his tiny face and asked myself why I could no longer love him.

This book sits at the edge of experience, of knowing and not knowing. It makes no distinction, it is the experience of experiencing. Its language so exact yet strange, so immediately vivid, the emotions it describes were mine as I read them. There was no distinction of personhood until there was. Just as its mint-eyed protagonists discovered themselves in the moment, ever watchful, ever wary and probing with bravado, so did I. And with awareness came a new sense of sadness, almost as sudden, of something lost. Yet on the other side, there is joy in spite of knowing. Because of knowing. There is innocence hand in hand with self awareness. To have both is the ultimate promise of literature.

At times, I awoke at night and sat up startled in bed. Then I felt a lost sensation from my earliest childhood, when twilight would unnerve me and I used to think: "Night and day, night and day forever. Won't there ever be anything more?" The same confused desire came back to me: the desire that I might find, upon awakening, not merely the night and the day, but rather something new, bewildering and painful.

When everything's sloughed off, like the skin of that lizard with the unforgiving eyes, I remember that I want this feeling. Yes I want the knowing, the dizzying inventiveness, the corrupting perspectives, no absolutes, meta-meta-meta, an endless versioning of reality, but I want both. I want all that and I want this feeling of total connectedness too--knowing and not knowing, innocence and jadedness. Matute knows that sense of looking back after all is known and therefore lost. She has that awareness but also that immediacy and sincerity, of experience bright and human and for the first time, every time, of the world as magical ethera coaxed from some deep unknown memory, as if my own, as if I had forgotten it myself.

blueskies157's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

A very intriguing book - I think I will think about it a lot, and should probably read it again soon to absorb it properly. Beautiful beautiful writing 

mpersidat's review against another edition

reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

the_bookishshelf's review against another edition

adventurous challenging funny hopeful reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

laraamaee's review against another edition

5.0

"What kind of monster am I now, no longer a child, but definitely, definitely not a woman?"

In The Island (Primera Memoria), 14-year-old Matia is sent to live with her tyrannical grandmother in Mallorca after being expelled from convent school, since her mother is dead and her father is absent. Against the backdrop of a hot summer, her schemes with her cousin Borja, and the haunting presence of the Spanish Civil War, María Matute pens a dazzling coming-of-age story which really struck a chord with me—perhaps because of the beautiful, poetic prose which describes the island, the violence of the world, and the sentiments of a lost and confused teenager in enchanting ways; perhaps because I'm in my own transition phase to adulthood this summer. Nevertheless, this was a wonderful book; short (under 180 pages), but stunning. It is translated from Spanish by Laura Lonsdale, but it doesn't feel like it in the sense that the writing flows so well and is so impressive. I highly recommend it, especially since I had never heard of this author before.

My only criticism: this book was written in 1959, so I understand that things were different back then, but...the fact that the character Lauro is called a Chinese racial slur as a nickname throughout the whole novel is...??? Awful???

aranmanoth's review against another edition

5.0

se me ha anidado en las costillas