Death in Spring

"Mercè Rodoreda is probably the best contemporary Catalan writer, not only in my opinion, but it seems agreed. Her reputation is well deserved, in my view. Her writing style is strong, unique, it created a school: Mercè Rodoreda will influence the literature for years to come—centuries to come if I’m being passionate. This particular book, Death in Spring , is not her most famous book. She sent it to her publisher unfinished and it was published posthumously. She wasn’t convinced the public would be interested because it’s dark, it’s almost terrifying in places. It has this spirit of magical realism, at a time before the thriving of magical realism in publishing in Spain, with Vargas Llosa and especially García Márquez . It was a very bold piece of writing and I would have loved to see what she would have written to finish the book. But, personally, I don’t find it unfinished because it’s not really about the story. It’s more about the feelings she provokes. “There’s enthusiasm…about Catalan fiction. It has the energy of the youth” It’s a very strange, very dark manifesto against rituals and rules and the repression of desire and the will to live. That’s probably why it’s been read as a criticism of Francoism. She finished it after she could come back to Spain, in the early 70s, but her life—like for many Spaniards at the time—was shattered by Francoism. So it might very well be inspired by that, but I think the book goes beyond the political situation. It’s against the centuries-long repression of freedom and the beauty of life. At the end, this book has a bad taste. I recommended it to the publisher Christopher MacLehose. I said, ‘that’s the best book you can read from Catalan literature.’ He read it and he was horrified about its dark intensity. And he’s read a lot of terrifying literature—serial killers, cutting bits off bodies. This book is not about that, but it goes to the depths. It’s like the work of Louise Bourgeois, the contemporary artist, who worked a lot with the unconscious and dreams and the vital essence of human beings. I think Mercè Rodoreda in her literature and in this book in particular also likes stirring the depths of humanity. One could argue it’s not a pleasant read, but it can be a life-changing one. The book is set in the countryside, in the mountains. She is very detailed in her use of words, she plays with repetitions, and she was probably thinking of Catalonia when she wrote it, but the reader can picture the same elements in their own landscape. It’s about a boy who is 14 years old, a part of his journey into adulthood. Mercè Rodoreda is picturing this as if it’s a fable, in a way, or scenes from folk tales. It’s like a novella, it’s snippets of actions that then all come together with these rituals. There are elements of nature that are almost like narrators—they’re not but they do have very symbolic power over people. People are very strange; you could almost say that they are creatures more than people. It’s very disturbing."