María and her granddaughter Alicia have never met. Decades apart,both make the same journey to Madrid in search of work and independence. María,scraping together a living as a cleaner and carer,sending money back home for the daughter she hardly knows; Alicia,raised in prosperity until a family tragedy,now trapped in a poorly paid job and a cycle of banal infidelities. Their lives are marked by precarity,and by the haunting sense of how things might have been different. Through a series of arresting vignettes,Elena Medel weaves together a broken family's story,stretching from the last years of Franco's dictatorship to mass feminist protests in contemporary Madrid. Audacious,intimate and shot through with razor-edged lyricism,The Wonders is a revelatory novel about the many ways that lives are shaped by class,history and feminism: about what has changed for working class women,and what has remained stubbornly the same.
MEDIA REVIEWS
Publisher: Pushkin PressISBN: 9781782276593Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
The Wonders is a poet's novel,delicate but strong,impressing its images firmly on the imagination.A mesmerizing read. Medel's prose is hypnotic,it's hard to believe this is her first novel. I was completely engrossed in this story,in the shadow each generation casts on the one that comes after it,in the tension between caring for oneself and caring for othersCompletely unsentimental and with a harshness that hides the most radiant and painful of scars... brings to life several generations of working women: it's a serene and impious novel that puts class,feminism,and the eternal complexity of family ties at the foreFull of brilliant moments of illumination... The effect of (the book's) fragmentation is to make of these individual women's lives a collective picture of working-class Spanish womanhood. With light touches Medel conveys gradual but tremendous change... it has a boldly ingenious structure and flashes of beautyA beautifully written novel that examines the lives of three generations of working-class women living precariously in MadridThe diminution of choices which poverty forces on people is superbly well exploredAn ambitious and enlightening book from an acclaimed Spanish poetAt just over 200 pages,The Wonders is a novel that doesn't waste a single word,instead basking in all the linguistic pleasures of great poetryVery rarely do natural talents,linguistic discipline,and emotional rawness coincide. That is the case of Elena Medel,one of the great young poets of our language,whose first novel unfolds a history of crude intimacies,subtle roughness and luminous sadness,who works from class conscience with moral force,stylistic precision and narrative honestyNarration and style go hand in hand in a literary wonder that is absolutely personal yet reminds you of the audacity of Virginia Woolf... one of Spain's best poets has become one of its most important novelistsWithout falling into clichés,with a style that exudes lyricism,Medel narrates what recent Spanish history has meant for women... a narrative wonderSpanish poet Medel's remarkable English-language debut moves from Francoist Spain into the present day,tracing a family's fractured ties over three generations... Arresting characterizations and vivid prose fuel Medel's searing look at the impact gender,class,and financial hardships have on working-class Spanish women's lives as the country is buffeted by wider cultural shifts. It adds up to a powerful storyMedel's poetic sensibility is evident in rhythmic,incantatory prose,yet she also looks at the world through a good novelist's magnifying glass...Medel makes room for her characters to grow into their power as women,a power they discover does not in fact lie in moneyMedel captures the plight of working women who are limited by class and gender dynamics...Small acts of protest add up to each woman's larger fight for freedom from the confines of men,money and everlasting grief...Though they have made mistakes and been lonely,they have survived. And that triumph they claim for themselvesThe Wonders is the long-awaited novel debut by one of the best poets of the new Spanish generation. The Wonders is a novel about money-a novel about how the money we don't have defines us. It is also a novel about care,responsibilities,and expectations; about the precariousness that does not respond to the crisis but to the class,and about who will tell the stories that define our origins and our pastPrizewinning Spanish poet Medel's debut novel examines the lives of three generations of women in Madrid with an unsparing eye...The translation from Spanish of Medel's unvarnished look at three constrained lives is unsentimental and directMedel's sensitive debut,charged with feminist insights but never losing sight of the particularities of its characters,weaves together the stories of two women whose deeper connection only becomes clear as the novel approaches its end...Spanish novelist Medel astutely examines the forces-political,economic,familial,and personal-that have shaped the two women's richly detailed lives. Though penned in by class and gender,often in ways they do not recognize,Maria and Alicia come across not as simple victims but as struggling survivors,still open to changeI read The Wonders is one page-turning night. Yet to describe Elena Medel's debut as gripping is to miss the point. An unflinching story about class,sex,family,and working women everywhere,this book achieves a rare combination of novelistic plotting and virtuosic interiority that left me rooting for Maria and Alicia as if I'd known them all my lifeA stylistic triumph...Reminiscent of Elena Ferrante and Virginia Woolf,The Wonders is a stunning debut about the intersection between poverty and womanhoodDreamlike yet precise,internal yet expansive,The Wonders moves between generations of women with a clear-eyed empathy for their struggles to be free. Medel's characters are hungry,angry,imperfect,and completely aliveA skillful,shattering first novel of great finesse,rare intelligence and profound maturityIn the wake of Annie Ernaux and Virginia Woolf,Elena Medel weaves together the intimate and the political from a rarely read point of view. A powerful new feminist voiceA beautiful first novel of mastery and intelligence. WonderfulA powerfully strange,translucent,but empathetic novel
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