Girls, Movies, Books

Born in Barcelona in 1961, Clara Usón is one of the iconic voices of contemporary Spanish fiction, her novels (from „Noches de San Juan” – 1998, „Primer vuelo” – 2001, „El viaje de las palabras” – 2005 to „Corazón de napalm” – 2009 or „La hija del Este” – 2012) having enjoyed warm audience and critical response and having subsequently received important literary awards. „El asesino tímido” (“The Timid Assassin”), published in 2018 and advancing an extremely interesting manner of reassessing the recent history of Spain, received the prestigious Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize for Literature and was rapidly translated into several foreign languages. For, by starting from an apparently commonplace narrative pretext, namely the story of the short but tumultuous life of Sandra Mozarovski, an actress playing in adult movies, the writer touches on sensitive issues in the transition period in Spain, on the tensions and contradictions that affected the Spanish society in the 1970s and 1980s and, not surprisingly, on her own teenage years, which she spent against the same background and approximately at the same time when the beautiful, and in actual fact unhappy, movie actress who made headlines in the tabloids, which relentlessly alleged that she was one of the women with whom King Juan Carlos had extramarital affairs, affirmed herself.

Shortly after it was published, many critics claimed that this text did not belong (at least not entirely) to the species of the novel, as its structure and constitutive elements were rather suggestive of a confession or of an essay. The ever-interpenetrating narrative structures, as well as the last section of the book obviously contributed to these controversies, as long as the ending in particular may also be interpreted from the vantage point of the author’s own biography and the ruminations on the writer’s role and place in society, the idea of redemption by writing and the revelation of great art grant the novel (recently published in Romania by Polirom Publishing House and admirably translated by the talented Mariana Sipoş) a degree of complexity that a hasty read might, perhaps, not foreshow.

Nevertheless, Clara Usón’s text is by no means an autobiography, but first and foremost a narrative endeavour aimed at providing an adequate comprehension of a clearly defined historical period, namely the transition from the Franco fascist regime to democracy, in a Spain in which the smouldering tensions that had led to the outbreak of Civil War decades before were still reverberating. Great history and personal history intersect at all times, the destinies of individual people are influenced by the events defining those years and people’s lives sometimes take unexpected turns. For, if Sandra Mozarovski shone on the big screen when she was barely eighteen to then pass away under strange circumstances that have as yet not been fully elucidated, the novel also draws on the author’s personal experiences, particularly on the moments in which, because of an uncontrolled exuberance and of an unhinged passion stemming from her desire to experience all the rhythms of freedom straightaway, she found herself in a limit situation which, unlike the young actress who made front-page news in the Spanish tabloids, she did manage to overcome. Not by herself, however, but helped by her family, particularly by her mother – the book is in fact dedicated ‘To my parents, Pepe and Luis, for their support and infinite patience.’ Therefore, as a painful confession and a personal profession of one’s struggle to come out of a personal inferno, but also as a meditation on an age that promised freedom to a generation that had been used to living under a dictatorship, this text is certainly no leisure read, because the readers are often literally forced to meditate on certain harsh realities as well as to imagine, be it for one moment, what they would have done in similar situations…

The host of characters are both real and fictional, their lives intersect and have a bearing on others, there are hints at members of the Spanish Royal family and at prominent members of the cultural circles in Spain (writers, actors, important psychiatrists) and Clara Usón does not avoid the recourse to interpolated narratives (the Maria and Michele episode), integrating everything into a narrative which, without being spectacular in terms of plot proper, remains nevertheless fascinating by the genuine art of seduction which the writer is perfectly apt at orchestrating. What results – as mentioned in the critical studies on her writing – is a reflexive metafictional structure not devoid of the influence of the great paragon Miguel de Cervantes, yet one perfectly integrated in the context of present-day reality, whether on a strictly literary level or on a more general, cultural one, because, especially by the end of the novel, the readers will have realized just how important some great literary models such as Wittgenstein, Cesare Pavese or Albert Camus have been to Clara Usón herself. And at the same time they will have also realized just how important these literary models are for the way in which this enthralling book should (and must) be interpreted. Because the writer unhesitatingly draws a symbolical parallel between her family and Wittgenstein’s, for instance, as well as one between herself and Emma Bovary. The text thus becomes a symbolic specular structure mirroring the characters’ lives while simultaneously reassessing the attitudes or the meanings of the behaviour of some famous literary figures. Clara Usón audaciously draws a parallel between Sandra’s life and her own life, highlighting – by analysing Sandra’s life somehow symbolically mediated by the perspective of an entire generation (one confused by the rapid changes that impacted on society, gradually altering the parents’ convictions or blaming the grand-parents for their choices) – the sense of confusion and the perpetual uncertainty that characterized the convoluted path to democracy and stability in Spain in the aftermath of the Franco regime. The motif of death (assumed, accidental, dreaded or awaited), along with the foreboding and fear of failure, are the red thread in Clara Usón’s novel, giving voice to the fears and doubts experienced by the protagonist, by the author and by her entire generation.

The novel is made up of five parts, the last of which (‘Vice and Perdition’) is perhaps the most disquieting one. Here, the destinies of Sandra and Clara overlap under the form of a film documenting one’s gradual degradation, one’s drug abuse and addiction, one’s desperate attempts to give up on drugs. This recollection also brings to the foreground the entire atmosphere of the first years of democracy in Spain, while it also highlights the way in which the generation of the very young – who were teenagers at the time – behaved in a world to the rhythms of which they were not accustomed. First love, the newly-discovered appetite for music, favourite reads – all of these are remarkably depicted in the novel. Above all, the readers will learn about important elements in the professional training of Clara Usón who, as a parenthesis, had worked as a lawyer for fifteen years before she began her writing career.

Obviously, this novel is also the story of a (sentimental and professional) education, one not devoid of strenuous and painstaking moments, of times of downfall and discouragement, all reflective in fact of the difficult times that Spain itself was undergoing, with all the due issues and contradictions. Sandra Mozarovski, the beautiful teenager convinced that she had found her untimely path in life due to the erotic and horror movies she played in embodies all these contradictions, as her innocence blends with her lasciviousness, her bright side with her murky secrets, her arranged interviews with tabloid headlines and so on. The rift between reality and role-playing, between one’s real image and the one projected on the big screen defines Clara Usón’s text from beginning to end, the writer thus tackling the eternal difference between appearance and essence, good and evil, beautiful and ugly. The book therefore becomes the symbolic expression of a distinct historical age and a meditation on the way in which human beings are regarded in a world quite unwilling to perceive the essence, but alas, only the eroticized appearances of women’s bodies, a world impervious to the suffering, qualms, vacillations or apprehension experienced by human beings underneath their social masks and which a neat make-up must conceal at all costs.

The issues approached by Clara Usón are not new in the Spanish fiction of recent decades, having been tackled, at least partially, by Rafael Chirbes, Miguel Delibes and Almudena Grandes, to mention but a few examples. But, in „El asesino tímido” the present writer has managed to enhance their meanings, precisely by this game of narrative mirrors and of female characters that cut across the text relentlessly. At times the book seems an elaborate puzzle, one that will be solved especially in the last chapter, where not only are the psychological, sociological and essayistic accents sorted out or explained, but everything is somehow re-contextualized in order to provide closure to an unadulterated personal chronicle, doubled by a historical one documenting the difficult transition period in Spain. And all is proof, if need be, of Clara Usón’s talent and of her amazing ability to tell a painful, moving story which, while being the story of herself and of her generation, also becomes the story of the readers, challenged to answer questions that are by no means easy, but always necessary. Perhaps especially in the times we live in.

Clara Usón, „El asesino tímido” („The Timid Assassin”)/ „Asasinul timid” Translation into Romanian by Mariana Sipoş, Iaşi, Polirom Publishing House, 2021

Translated into English by Mirela Petraşcu