Mercè Rodoreda

The Time of the Doves (La Plaza del Diamante)

Average customer rating:

Tour-de-force
A Life During Conflict
Emotionally Powerful
Hugging a dove
La Plaça del Diamant

The Time of the Doves (La Plaza del Diamante)
Merce Rodoreda
Manufacturer: Graywolf Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

War | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

jp-unknown2 | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Back Room
The Family of Pascual Duarte (Spanish Literature Series)
The Spanish Civil War
The Hive
Spain: The Root and the Flower: An Interpretation of Spain and the Spanish People

ASIN: 0915308754

Book Description

The Time of the Doves, the powerfully written story of a naïve shop-tender during the Spanish Civil War and beyond, is a rare and moving portrait of a simple soul confronting and surviving a convulsive period in history. The book has been widely translated, and was made into a film.

Customer Reviews:

Tour-de-force.......2007-03-06

What a terrific story. Set during the turbulent years of the Spanish Civil War and dictatorship, of the 1930's and 40's, the novel traces the mediocre and often turbulent life of Natalia, nicknamed "Colometa", through difficult years of famine and depression, as a young mother and unskilled laborer in Catalonia.
We're not talking about an overtly political novel here: this is a story of the human condition, the suffering that any one of us endures at some point in our individual lives. The author scarcely mencions political struggle, nor does she take sides; the dominant theme here is the perpetual plight of a passive yet resiliant female who fights for survival in a brutal and depressed urban environment.
The first person narration creates a wonderful tone. The narrator is soulful, spontaneous, and often gutwrenching. Her language is extremely natural and authentic. The prose reads as if it were a transcription of someone's internal thought process: unpredictable yet familiar. The reader forms an intense emotional bond with the narrative voice that leads to an abundance of tear-jerking moments.
This is the kind of novel that you become attatched to, whether you are a casual reader or a literature scholar. I picked it up an couldn't put it down.
Lastly this novel represents a keen example of true minority struggle under the harsh conditions of a dictatorship. Its original language of publication, Catalan, was prohibited in 1939 by the Spanish government, and therefore, its mere existance is an act of rebellion.
Don't confuse this female story of survival with the sappy victimist writers of the Gloria Anzaldua type - "Colometa" is a real survivor, whose struggle inspires compassion and reflection.

A Life During Conflict.......2007-01-10

This novel, written by Merce Rodoreda during her exile from Spain and well after the Spanish Civil War, describes the life of a woman who grows from young adulthood through middle age during political upheaval. She could have described war, or poverty, or death, or fear, and appealed solely to sentiment but she does not. This novel is rich and complex, appealing to both sense and sensation. Her protagonist, Quimet, is usually sympathetic but sometimes not, as most human beings are.

While the Spanish Civil War is the setting for this novel, Rodoreda writes outside the lines and makes a book which describes this specific place and anyplace. To give context to other reviewers' displeasure with the translated title of La Placa del Diamante, Franco forbid Catalans, the residents of Barcelona and Merce Rodoreda among them, to speak their own language. Language is primary to Catalans and Rodoreda was a Catalan writer despite Franco.

Rodoreda writes tangible descritions of poverty and unhappiness, sliding back and forth from the concrete outside world and the narrator's sometimes dreamy interior world. The shifts in description themselves describe how Quimet's consciousness is altered by poverty, by hunger, by death and by redemption.

This is an excellent and thoughtful novel, and a pleasure to read.

Emotionally Powerful.......2006-10-30

This is an amazingly powerful book. It is narrated by a young girl in Spain just before, during, and after the Spanish Civil War. The style is something like stream-of-consciousness. The narrator is niave and almost somewhat passive in her life. She describes herself as lacking the guidance of a mother, as her mother died, and in many ways lacking the love of her father, who, after her mother's death, remains mostly silent. For this reason, she is left to find her own way.

The book begins with Natalia's courtship by Quimet, her eventual husband. The entire episode is wonderfully wrought - Natalia is very naive and pretty much accepts whatever Quimet does (and he's not always the nicest guy).

Natalia lives through the war, and the book does an amazing job of conveying what we today would term "post-traumatic stress disorder." After starving and living in fear, Natalia is never really the same. But of course, like many, she doesn't understand what she feels and, in fact, makes no attempt to understand. And that is the power of book - it shows us what she feels, it is not explicit, it arouses the emotion and leaves you powerfully affected.

Hugging a dove.......2006-04-14

Incredibly tender and sweet story. Beautifully written. I grew up in Gr?cia and reading the book brings me back there more directly than a charter flight (I've been living abroad for 11 years). It brings me back to Gr?cia to give "la Colometa" a big hug.

P.S.: it's shocking Amazon give the title in Spanish rather than the original title in Catalan- it makes as much sense as giving the title in Chinese.

La Plaça del Diamant.......2003-05-10

In my opinion, this is one of the most tender and at the same time hard book written in the 20th century in Catalonia. It mixes love, passion, deep feelings among one of the most difficults times that we Catalans have lived and we still live: the represion in all senses of the Spanish Kingdom.

Book Description

Acaso la mejor novela catalana del siglo, ésta fue publicada en 1966 y profusamente traducida y reeditada. En ella, la sencilla historia de una mujer se carga de una profunda significación al condensar la evocación de toda una forma de vida que agoniza. Colometa (Paloma) nos narra desde su particular prisma, entre naïf, desequilibrado y sumamente poético, las vivencias que tiene que atravesar en los duros tiempos de la Guerra Civil española y de la terrible posguerra. Un personaje inolvidable que permanecerá en el interior del lector que sepa apreciar la belleza de su testimonio.

Maybe the most acclaimed Catalan novel of the past century, published in 1966 y profusely translated and re-edited. In this novel, the simple story of a woman acquires a deep significance by condensing the evocation of an entire life that is in the death throes.

Customer Reviews:

Easy to miss, worth reading.......2002-03-01

If Catalan, the language in which this novel was written, were a world language like Spanish, Merce Rodoreda would be as famous as Gabriel García Márquez, who called La Plaza del Diamante "the most beautiful novel published in Spain after the Civil War."

Surreal cruel reality.......2001-12-13

A very human story, the surreally interpreted world of a woman, through her life. Reminds me of Camus' "Stranger" for athmospheres and coldness of style. Highly rewarding reading.

!Excelente!.......2001-04-29

This book is well worth reading. The portrait of Catalunians at the time of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)is excellent. The ramifications of war on non-participants is examined, particularly on women and children. Although originally written in Catalan, it is studied in Spanish as an exemplary example of Spanish Literature of the 20th Century. Just so you know, it has also been made into a movie with English subtitles, although as usual it is much better to read the novel. Natalia becomes "Colometa" (pigeon/dove)and reverts to Natalia. She finds herself in a controlling relationship...will she find her wings? Pay attention to the imagery of the doves and the diamonds and the constant tracing of images.

Catalan literature classic.......1999-11-02

Advise: The book was written in catalan. So, the original title is "La plaça del diamant". It's one of the best of Catalan literature. It's around the story of a woman during the civil war

A Broken Mirror (European Women Writers)

Average customer rating:

A Broken Mirror (European Women Writers)
Merce Rodoreda
Manufacturer: Bison Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Family Saga | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0803290071

Book Description

In its moment of great splendor the novel was held as a mirror of society: Mercè Rodoreda shatters that mirror in this, her most ambitious novel, which tells its story in brilliant fragments, a vision reflected and refracted and finally coming together in a richly articulated mosaic of life. Through this Broken Mirror, the reader sees events and characters spanning three generations and composing a kaleidoscopic family history ranging over six decades and turning upon events both intimate and historic—most notably the Spanish Civil War.

Opening with Teresa Goday, the lovely young fishmonger’s daughter married to a wealthy old man, the story shifts from one perspective to another, reflecting from myriad angles the founding of a matriarchal dynasty—and its eventual, seemingly inevitable disintegration. A family saga extending from the prosperous Barcelona of the 1870s to the advent of the Franco dictatorship, A Broken Mirror is finally also a novel about the inexorable passing of time.

Average customer rating:

Camellia Street
Merce Rodoreda
Manufacturer: Graywolf Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

My Christina and Other Stories (The Graywolf Short Fiction Series)
A Broken Mirror (European Women Writers)
The Time of the Doves (La Plaza del Diamante)

ASIN: 155597192X

Book Description

novel, Catalonia, tr David Rosenthal

My Christina (Graywolf Short Fiction Series)

Average customer rating:

My Christina (Graywolf Short Fiction Series)
Merce Rodoreda
Manufacturer: Graywolf Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Spanish | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

The Time of the Doves (La Plaza del Diamante)

ASIN: 0915308649

Book Description

My Christina & Other Stories

Years after her death, Mercè Rodoreda's work is enjoying a well-deserved renaissance. The seventeen stories that comprise this volume vary tremendously in tone and style, from the hallucinatory to the bleakly realistic, from tales of tenderness and love to stories that might best be called folktales, reality merged with dream.

Average customer rating:

La Calle De Las Camelias
Merce Rodoreda
Manufacturer: Edhasa
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

French | Foreign Language Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Spanish | Foreign Language Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Average customer rating:

Aloma. Roman.
Merce Rodoreda
Manufacturer: Suhrkamp
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

All German Books | German | Foreign Language Books | Specialty Stores | Books
ASIN: 351822056X

Average customer rating:

Mi Cristina/El Mar/My Christina/the Sea
Merce Rodoreda
Manufacturer: Alianza (Buenos Aires, AR)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Spanish | Foreign Language Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Cartes a l'Anna Muria, 1939-1956 (Espai de dones)

Average customer rating:

Cartes a l'Anna Muria, 1939-1956 (Espai de dones)
Merce Rodoreda
Manufacturer: Edicions de l'Eixample
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books

General | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Catalan | More Languages | Foreign Language Books | Specialty Stores | Books
ASIN: 8486279356

Tots El Contes (Les Millors obres de la literatura catalana ; 18)

Average customer rating:

Tots El Contes (Les Millors obres de la literatura catalana ; 18)
Merce Rodoreda
Manufacturer: Edicions Peninsula 62
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books

Catalan | More Languages | Foreign Language Books | Specialty Stores | Books

Authors:

Authors

Authors