THE SPANISH INN

by Jean-Louis Bergonzo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1968

Alienation, rejection, the eroding, narrowing vocabulary of love as love seeps away part and parcel of the narrator's present predicament incarceration in an insane sytum. Remembering imagining he continues an agonizing replay of his relationship with his wife, Lucile/Cecile, his ""lost Spain,"" the woman who had cheated and abandoned him. His fantasies. . . grotesque burlesque, find them in emasculating sexual situations and again in a bizarre triangle as he wins her away from a Negro circus boxer only to learn that he is not the sole recipient of her favors. The final (true?) image leaves him as the husband cuckolded by his best friend who remarks dispassionately ""she is much more a fiancee and a mistress than she is wife."" The loss and disillusionment here are tapered and tempered by irony. And the author's intricate images, projections, have an excellent translator in Helen R. Lane.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1968

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Grove

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1968

Categories: FICTION