Bitter Taste of Time

By Bea González

Book Overview

"A richly layered and evocative novel about the lives and loves of a family of remarkable Spanish women "Set in northern Spain from 1920 to the present, "The Bitter Taste of Time" is the compelling... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0002245736
• ISBN13: 9780002245739
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
• Length: 255 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Unforgettable

"The Bitter Taste of Time " is the story of a family of strong women and weak men that reads like silk as it weaves itself through pre- Franco times, the Spanish Civil War and the arrival of an uncertain democracy in modern Spain. The playing field is the tiny Spanish town of Canteira in the province of Galicia. Cantiera is "a town of barbarous ignorance," "a town of hens and roosters, clucking away at people's miseries" which grows,in the seventy year span of the novel, to a bustling town of seventy thousand. The players are five unforgettable women, Maria la Reina, Carmen the Holy One, Cecilia the story-teller who feeds the body and the soul, Maria's daughters Asuncion and Matilde, and Maria's grand-daughter Gloria, the entrepreneur. The centre line is the small pension which later becomes the Encarna and Hope Hotel. Through here pass the contrabandistas and many others, who bring to the small town the outside world with all its changes and horrors. These stories, Cecilia feeds the town people who weep "so as not to weep for their own loved ones, their own tragedies, the memories that ate away at their hearts, so that years and years later, their own stories remained untold, lay safely trapped inside, because the telling, they knew, would bring it all back, the fear, the torment, the pain..." This is a very Spanish tale, reminiscent of Isabel Allende and "Like Water for Chocolate", which could not be placed anywhere else in the world, and Gonazalez, who is a Canadian writer, runs with the best Canada has to offer. Suffice to read the frenzy she creates for the reader as she contrapositions the impending deaths of Artur and Maria. Suffice to recall the "vats of venom, "spittoons of spite" and "harangues of hate" that tumble from Maria's lips. Suffice to envision Arturo's limp body, swinging among the hams, to feel the power of the author's pen. An excellent read.