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NADA �� or Nothing �� that is what Andrea, the main character and narrator of Carmen Laforet’s novel, thinks to have distilled out of her year in Barcelona. (view spoiler)[[ Me marchaba ahora sin haber conocido nada de lo que confusamente esperaba: la vida en su plenitud, la alegría, el interés profundo, el amor. De la casa de la calle de Aribau no me llevaba nada. (hide spoiler)]. Natalia is an orphan in her late teens who goes to live with her relatives in their apartment in calle Aribau, in what is an upper middle-class part of this Mediterranean city, to study at its university. But this is during the years soon after the Spanish civil war, when the country was enduring very harsh conditions and when the rest of the world was undergoing its second twentieth-century cataclysm.

The novel begins as Andrea arrives in the city, coming from an unidentified small town, with a bag heavy with books looking both with apprehension and longing to the city that she has envisioned in her dreams. But she soon feels she has entered a nightmare. This is a gray and desolate city and everything about the Aribau household is battered. Its inhabitants: grandmother, uncles, aunt, servant and dog, seem to come out of Goya representation.

This is then a very idiosyncratic ‘Bildungsroman��. In spite of her claim that she has grasped ‘nothing�� Andrea indeed learns a fair amount during the Barcelona stay. First, she acquires the ability of dealing with hunger, daily. She does not get fed by her relatives and the little pension she has from what must be a puny inheritance she prefers to use for gifts that assuage another craving; that of buying her way, candidly, into the student circles. Then she learns how to live as a witness to an ongoing domestic violence that makes a very uncomfortable reading. These scenes offer her a lesson on the complexities of human nature with its passions and foibles and her reaction is one of cold and distant self-preservation. She also moves among university circles, both amongst better to-do students and families, as well as more bohemian and intellectual groups. This awakens new dimensions and vistas in her life. And it is in those circles that she engages in a friendship that will both delight and torture her. So no, not nothing, Barcelona will leave a mark on Andrea even if the reader will not be able to follow her as the novel ends with her departure.

This is the first novel by Carmen Laforet (1921-2004) who wrote it at the age of 24, in 1945. It was an immediate success and it won the first prize of the first time the Nadal Prize was assigned. This used to be a very prestigious literary award given by the Editorial Destino. Since 1988, when Destino was purchased by Planeta, its destiny has been very commercial and for me uninteresting. Nada is an outstanding sample of what has been called the ‘Tenebrous�� school and has become almost a document that has recorded those dark years.(view spoiler)[ Its success made it soon one of the standard texts studied in school. The rivalry between Andrea’s two uncles made me soon think of Goya, and Laforet indeed, mentions his Caprichos towards the end of her book. [Poco a poco las caras se iban perfilando ganchudas o aplastadas como en un capricho de Goya. Aquellos enlutados parecían celebrar un extraño aquelarre]. (hide spoiler)]



But in spite of the very tenebrous atmosphere, Laforet’s offers windows of light. There is a crispness in the text that results, I think, from the absence of both sentimentality and stupefaction. This clarity of vision is accompanied by an elegant writing, rich in tones and nuances, and her exploration of synaesthetic imagery is particularly captivating.