The time of Cherries by Monrserrat Roig

Catalan fiction

Original title – El temps de les cireres

Translator – Julia Sanches

Source – Review copy

I have been somewhat remiss with my Spanish lit month reviews. I will have to do one next week, but this is a book I had seen around, and when I got the chance to be sent it from Daunt Books, I had to say yes. I have read several beautiful books in Catalan by female writers, so this appealed, and I have always had a fancy for the Franco years and after in Spain. She had taught in the UK and was a socialist and strong advocate of the Catalan world she has written books about Those from Catalan who suffered under the Nazis in the war. The story is of a woman in her forties returning to Barcelona after several years away.

Patrícia’s flat hadn’t changed. Though she wished she could have updated the kitchen, laid down ceramic tiles and put in new cupboards. Esteve left me nothing but problems, she said. I can’t raise the rent either – the tenants have been with us for years! I was lucky to get an offer for the down-stairs. The sale went through when Esteve was still alive, and he left me a lifetime annuity. The enclosed balcony was still the same; on one wall, the painting Francisco Ventura had given them – the watercolours that Francisco, of the Mundetas, God rest his soul, painted in the style of Modest Urgell – the two rocking chairs, one with a hole in the seat- what do I have to do to get it fixed? – the brazier table, the sewing box…

Her aunt she is close to and the way she looks at the world in tthe book

Natalia has returned to her home town of Barcelona after 12 years away, living around Europe part of that time like the writer herself spent in the UK where she had an affair with Jimmy. They lived together, and we found out he had moved on, and she had now come home to face the ghost of her past. Her family, her mother and her didn’t get on due to the fact her mother put most of her effort into looking after their brother Pere AND judit her mother has never quite been able to rebuild her relationship with her other children in fact, for Natalia it is her aunt is maybe a more of a mother figure added to that her other brother and his wife that she finds a little boring and not to her taste as we see this world through Natalia’s eyes and she describes everything in the home and world around her from the Tupperware to the food. The book is a ripping apart of a family and seeing what has brought it to a certain point as a family. her siblings =marriage her parents and Aunt patrica wh had a poet for a husband after he heard she was wealthy. Then Natalia’s past may be inspired by Roig’s, and support for causes makes her seem like she is partly from Roig’s own life. The places she loved are now ghosts a tree and pond aren’t there any more. This is a look back and edging towards a brighter future post-Franco world.

Now Patrícia says she drinks to drown her sorrows. She knows it isn’t a sin: Jesus turned water into wine during the wedding at Cana; Jesus spoke a great deal about wineries and winemakers; Jesus made the wine his blood at the Last Supper. Patrícia had read it in the Bible: ‘No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse.

Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskin , and bot are preserved .

More of her aunt but looking at how her world has changed over the years

You know I love Catalan fiction. This is a perfect example of why she has brought us to the heart of a family and a world in change. She arrives just as Puig Antich was killed after a robbery where a policeman was shot. He was a figure head of that Catalan cause a cause celebre in his time many felt Franco would cancel the killing but this was the dying years of his regime. He was one of the last killed by Franco, and a name many people remember, so she comes just after this happens. The tension of this is in the background as she does an autopsy on the family, and we see how they all end up where they are. The relationships, fallingouts, jealousy, and the outcome of a mother’s love for just one son are all laid bare in this book. s well as the political scene at the time. The city itself is almost a character in the book at times. You feel its presence throughout the book. Have you read this book ?

Winston’s score – rich prose of a family, city and time not long gone.