Overview

An original, fresh new voice from France telling a devastating tale about the pretensions of the Spanish bourgeoisie within a satirical allegory of France-era Spanish society. Maria de los Milagros, known as Milagrosa, is the daughter of a domineering mother who terrorizes the family with simulated hysterical fits; exploits everyone around her; and for whom her daughter is only an adjunct to her social status. Coddled, repressed, suffocated, Milagrosa never grows to independent womanhood, never manages to cut the psychological umbilical cord. This portrait of a monstrous tyrant is both splendidly ironic and vividly humorous; Milagrosa's mother dies at the same time as the Generalissimo. The translation is by the award-winning Dr. Mike Mitchell.

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9781903517079

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A finely crafted first novel that, in the form of a young woman's childhood recollections of her mother, creates a portrait of the last days of Franco's Spain. Young Maria de los Milagros, known to one and all as Milagrosa, has no one to blame but herself if she's not a child prodigy: after all, her mother Carmen began taking her to school at the age of two. That, admittedly, was more for her mother's benefit than hers-Carmen was the village schoolmistress and saw no reason to waste good money on a babysitter-but it gave Milagrosa something of a head start all the same. A sensitive and sheltered girl, Milagrosa is nevertheless completely overshadowed by her strong and outgoing mother. Used to getting her way, Carmen does not suffer fools gladly: in one of her fits of pique, she even punched out the mayor and was subsequently dismissed from her post. Undeterred, she took a position in her old hometown and moved back with her daughter, sister, and mother (her husband, who refused to move, was unceremoniously left behind). In her new surroundings, during the 1960s, Milagrosa grows up surrounded by all the old certitudes of Spain-making her First Communion; listening to Franco's weekly radio broadcasts-but her coming-of-age is troubled by storm clouds of change looming over Spain and her family alike. Carmen finds herself the victim of a rebellion after her mother dies, when her nephew Arturo stands up to her and demands that his mother receive her fair share (i.e., the greater part) of the estate. That's bad enough, but soon the whole country seems on the verge of turmoil when the elderly Franco falls deathly ill. Can Spain survive without Carmen's beloved caudillo? Can Carmen? The old ways die hard, but hardest of all for the old themselves. An exceptional debut, sensitive and rich without sentimentality. (Kirkus Reviews)

Laced with delicious streaks of black comedy and dominated by sparkling caricatures, Mercedes Deambrosis's accomplished first novel is a delight to read. A simple plot gives the author a free rein to develop her characters to the full as this sad but wickedly funny story of a bourgeois family in Franco's Spain unfolds. Milagrosa's mother, a tyrannical and overbearing woman whose bosom and thighs seem to expand by the day, has three main aims in life - to maintain her position in society, to see her daughter married off as advantageously as possible and to inherit and keep for herself all the family fortunes. A hypochondriac who is prone to fits of hysteria at convenient moments, she rules her weak and ineffectual family with a rod of iron, just occasionally falling silent to her long-suffering husband or submissive sister who raise a silent cheer in the reader when they dare to confront her. It is Milagrosa, however, who is the truly tragic figure, drawn without the traces of irony and wit which lighten the other characters. Deprived by her mother of education and friends, she spends most of her childhood confined to the house where she cannot be an embarrassment. At the age of 21 she falls heir to a family trust fund and for a few pages it seems that she might finally have found the strength and courage to assert her independence, but yet again her mother wins the battle of wills as she escorts her to the bank and pressurizes her into handing over the entire contents of the account. Left penniless and deserted, her future seems bleak, and yet, ironically, it is the weak characters who finally triumph and we are left wondering, hoping, that she will survive. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

"Of Spanish and Greek origin, Mercedes Deambrosis is a new and individual voice in French fiction. Milagrosa, her first novel, has been described as a revelation, a stylisitic tour de force. ""Marie-Claire"" said, ""Mercedes Deambrosis is an unknown. That is quite normal, this is her first novel. But what assurancel One would swear it was written by an author at the height of her powers."" Dedalus will publish her second novel An Afternoon with Rock Hudson in 2003."

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