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I read this very slowly, and I have to ask myself, why? I think the answer is that Andrea, our 18 year old protagonist feels everything so intensely. I would read a bit and mull over the very odd characters and then pick it up again to find Andrea suffering; I would be drawn in and then interrupted, glad to have a breather, only to take it up again fascinated by the brutality between Juan and Gloria, the poverty of Andrea's life, the flaunting wealth of her friend Ena, and the dark, demon-like character of Román, whom Andrea resembles in appearance.

Andrea has arrived in Barcelona after living in a village and she hopes her life will open up to all sorts of new experiences, but times are hard. This is the war years of the early 1940s, and the aftermath of the Spanish civil war. Andrea joins the exotic household in the once prestigious area of Calle Aribau, close to the university and the Gothic centre, the harbour can be seen from the top floors of the house. The great house of her grandmother is now separated into apartments, sold off to raise money, and stashed with tumbling piles of ancient furniture. The remaining rooms are occupied by her grandmother, the two uncles, Román and Juan, his wife, Gloria and their baby and initially Andrea's aunt Angustias, the maid-servant Antonia and the dog Trueno.

I think this is the type of novel described as a bildungsroman; although we only see one year of Andrea's life in Barcelona (the novel ends with her departure for Madrid), she suffers a great deal. She certainly appears as an innocent to her uncle Román, but by the following autumn she has learnt far more than she realises.

Here is Román, trying to ease his loneliness by paying a little attention to his niece:

"Look I wanted to talk to you, but it's impossible. You're a baby . . . 'what's good,' 'what's bad,' 'what I feel like doing' . . . that's what you have in your head, as clearly as a child. Sometimes I think you resemble me, that you understand me, that you understand my music, the music of this house . . . . The first time I played the violin for you, I was trembling inside with hope, with a terrible joy when your eyes changed with the music . . . . I thought, little one, that you'd understand me even without words, that you were my audience, the audience I needed. . . .

Román frightens Andrea with the past lives and the secrets of the occupants of the house. He finishes his long diatribe with:

'And all the life in this house, as dirty as a muddy river . . . . When you have lived here longer, this house and its smell and its old things, if you're like me, they'll seize the life in you. And you're like me . . . . Aren't you like me? Tell me, don't you resemble me a little?"
There we were, I was on the mat on the floor and he was standing. I didn't know if he enjoyed frightening me or if he really was crazy. He'd finished talking almost in a whisper when he asked me that last question. I was quiet, wanting to escape, nervous.

Andrea comes to understand her uncle's nervous intensity very well, because she is like him in many ways. She feels and thinks deeply, but she has enough sense to resist the pull into his past, and the dead-ends of his life. We learn in small asides that Román was a supporter of the legitimate government before Franco's seizing of power. During the civil war Román tries to persuade his brother Juan to leave the Nationalist side. Both brothers have been imprisoned and tortured. It is a past of split loyalties, of family members betraying one another, of passions lost forever. Angustias, Andrea's aunt retreats to a convent after finally deciding to reject her love dalliance with Don Jeronimo of more than 20 years. It is a house suffocating with many past lives and all of this becomes part of Andrea's inheritance as she enters her own world of love given and lost.

I think this is a rare and powerful book because it shows people pushed beyond the limits of their capacity by the horrors of a civil and then a world war. The details of Andrea's fresh perspective gives a unique touch to what could have been yet another 'lives destroyed by war' story. Most of the story is narrated through Andrea's youthful, and yes innocent gaze. We root for her as she is determined to live her own life, despite the sorrows surrounding and threatening to overwhelm her.

It's also a book that reveals Barcelona, the old quarters, the Gothic cathedral, the beaches and splendid parks and the industrial harbour, the university where Andrea studies. She walks and runs, sometimes to escape the house, or on one dangerous occasion pursuing Juan through the ramblas, as he searches for Gloria. Laforet's book captures the history of Spain and of Barcelona, intensely through the eyes of our 18 year old hero, Andrea.