The Carpenter's Pencil - Hardcover

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Manuel Rivas was born in Galicia, in Spain, in 1957, and has worked for many years as a journalist as well as a prize-winning novelist. Three of his short stories formed the basis for Jos Luis Cuerda's award winning film, "Butterfly," which was distributed in the U.S. by Miramax Films.

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Set in Galicia during the Spanish Civil War, this novel tells the story of Dr. Daniel Da Barca, who twice miraculously escapes death in front of the firing squad only to be given life imprisonment, a sentence that is later commuted. The principal narrator, though, is Herbal, the guard who escorts Da Barca during his various incarcerations. The third major character is Marisa Mallo, whose marriage by proxy to the doctor is ultimately consummated with Herbal's assistance. Ironically, the ubiquitous role of the painter ("He's the one who paints the ideas") is mostly symbolic. Rivas leaps across time zones and switches narrative voice. Yet with minimal description he masterfully sketches, for example, the hopeless atmosphere of the dank prison with a few brushstrokes, as if he held the titular pencil. And for a novel set during wartime to convince us of the doom and despair of conflict without a single battle scene is admirable indeed. This British-slanted translation marks the first American appearance of this up-and-coming Spanish author. Recommended. Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC Lib., Dublin, OH
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Dr. Daniel Da Barca is a Republican hero of the Spanish Civil War, an almost folkloric figure at the center of this lyrical though frequently impenetrable import. His story is related, in the spirit of Cervantes's Exemplary Tales, in a bar, by a Galician brothel keeper to a favorite whore. Da Barca's politics and philosophy stem from what his teacher, Dr. N¢voa Santos, calls "the theory of intelligent reality" that irony and lyricism are organic parts of the human condition. Even before Franco's uprising, Da Barca's movements were tracked by a soldier named Herbal a man who conceals his moral susceptibility beneath a shell of brutality. In the first days of the war, Da Barca, along with other Republican notables, is imprisoned in Santiago. One of his fellow prisoners is a painter who is taken out and killed by a group including Herbal. On the way back, Herbal, who has picked up the carpenter's pencil that the painter had been using in prison, hears a voice in his head it is the voice of the deceased, who makes Herbal into the unwilling vessel of Da Barca's salvation. Twice Da Barca is taken out to be shot, and twice he is saved by Herbal, who later arranges for the doctor's transfer from the harsh prison at Coru¤a to the less rigorous camp at Porta Coeli, from which he manages to direct a Republican resistance group. Although Rivas's (Butterfly's Tongue) highly charged language is sometimes excessive and the narrative convoluted, his instinctive balancing of Da Barca's heroism against Herbal's brutish plebian consciousness creates a work of endearing nobility that will reward the patience of what is likely to be a very small American audience.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Rivas is one of the most popular and talented contemporary Spanish writers, but his work is just starting to be appreciated in the U.S. In this novel, Rivas returns to the dark days of the Spanish civil war and the shared fate of two uncommon people: Dr. Daniel Da Barca, a doctor on the side of the Republic, and Herbal, an illiterate fascist who becomes Da Barca's nemesis and shadow during his long stay in prison. Herbal took the carpenter's pencil from a nameless artist he was ordered to execute, and it serves as a bridge between him and the prisoners' literate, rarefied world. It is simultaneously a practical and artistic instrument, an apt symbol of all that was bound together in the peculiar struggle of the Spanish civil war. Rivas introduces us to an additional inauspicious cast of characters: Pepe Sanchez, the bolero singer; "Genghis Khan," a wrestler; Dombodan, an innocent youth; and Marisa Mallo, loved by both Da Barca and Herbal. A very poignant story of ordinary lives bound together by extraordinary events. Ted Leventhal
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