Finally, one of my favorite novels has been translated into English! I love Espido Freire’s Irlanda and it has always annoyed me that it isn’t more widely known. At least, now people can read it in English. Yay!
This is a fairly short novel that reads very easily. The apparent simplicity of the writing style, however, conceals a lot of mysteries and hidden revelations. The novel is narrated in the first person by Natalia, a 15-year-old girl who is a powerful but an extremely unreliable narrator. You need to be a very careful reader to keep track of the information she is trying to conceal and to avoid letting Natalia manipulate you.
Natalia’s greatest goal in life is to remain an obedient little child for as long as possible. In order to achieve this goal, she engages in a variety of hugely transgressive acts. Natalia is one of many recent female characters who use their considerable intelligence, strength and resilience in order to defend their right never to grow up and take responsibility for their own lives.
This is a female Bildungsroman (a novel of female development.) I read dozens of Bildungsromane for my research but there are few I enjoyed as much as this one. A literary critic likes novels that offer a lot of material to analyze, and Freire’s Irlanda definitely does that.
If you have read this novel, let’s discuss it! I’ve been dying to meet somebody I could discuss it with.
Clarissa's Blog 
I will first get my hands on a copy. Then I can read and discuss. 🙂
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I’m sure you can get it through ILL.
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I love ILL. I get books/papers/miscellaneous resources for free, and somebody always has what I’m looking for.
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“When I was your age” story is forthcoming. 🙂
When I was an undergrad, the ILL system was in a very rudimentary state. I was in the last year of my Master’s program when I received a book I’d requested through ILL in the second year of my BA. 🙂
Now, I get everything within days.
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It came in! 🙂
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Yay!! Tell me what you think!
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Is it just me, or is it that every time she repeats a story, something’s different? Like how first it was her mother’s idea to leave, and then she claims that it was her decision? I think Sagrario’s deathbed speech is different the second time around, too.
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Oh yes. There will be more and more new details coming up. This narrator manipulates her story any way she wishes.
I’m happy to have a fellow reader of this novel. Yippee! 🙂
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My mind keeps coming back to random quotes and little details, especially moments when Natalia changes topics so quickly it’s difficult to follow. Some of them are things to do with Nena’s eccentricities. I feel like Natalia feels guilty about something to do with Sagrario, but I’m not sure just yet. The flowers from the first two chapters stick in my mind, too. And the circles. Now I’ll probably stay up reading, because I’ve thought about it so much.
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I wonder, does the word “fear” appear a lot in the English translation? In the original, it is all over the place. And then one starts to think, what s the source of fear in this novel?
I wish you were my literature student. 🙂
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I don’t think I’ve seen the word fear, no. But the feeling is definitely there, especially when she talks about night and circles and the turtle. “Nightmares” have come up once or twice, though, and “ghosts.” Though the only tangible ghost she speaks of never seems to be associated with her fear. Unless it’s a latent fear; I did find something that said the turtle was Sagrario’s. And then Irlanda’s cat is nothing like the turtle–there was a sense of relief in that statement.
I can’t help but think that she’s haunted by her sister’s ghost, and misses her when she’s gone. Yet at the same time this mysterious turtle keeps cropping up, almost parallel to the comfort her sister seems to give her. Maybe it means she’s really afraid of her sister?
It feels so good to actually think so much into things. I don’t often get to read such rich material. I think the last time I inhaled a book this quickly, it was The Book Thief, and then it was mostly the ending. I was recently disappointed by Dracula, and have heard so many analyses of vampires that I just didn’t have the motivation to really think about it afterward.
Alas, I’m not anyone’s literature student at the moment. I haven’t taken a literature-based class since my first semester, and my next will likely be a year after next semester (or possibly the semester after next, if I have enough credits open). It makes for a sad lack of reading time during the school year.
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You have no idea how happy I am that you like it.
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You have no idea how happy I am to be reading it. My dance for joy in the lab this afternoon and subsequent sprint to the library were definitely worth it. And then to find out that the lending library checked it out for a whole year on my behalf…I felt like I was in heaven.
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I’m willing to bet Irlanda stole the keys so Natalia couldn’t lock her chests and hide them away.
I also find it interesting that Natalia claims she’s trying to grow up. Yet to her, obeying gives her “limitless freedom.” Freedom from what to do what, I wonder? Meanwhile, as nasty as Irlanda is, she seems more powerful than Natalia not only because of Natalia’s fear but because of her unwillingness to disobey Irlanda’s suggestions.
I also think their responses to the uncle’s speech about rewards is interesting. I also think Natalia’s statement that “because we didn’t ask for it, we got a reward” is misleading. Her aunt could easily have shown them the chests whether they asked for anything or not. If her aunt hadn’t done that, if she decided not to show anyone who’d asked, then she might have only shown the one girl her own set of chests. Then there’s Irlanda’s statement, “But I was Grandmother’s favorite!”, which is one of the few hints she’s given that both of them are jealous of each other. Natalia doesn’t reveal a lot of those signs, yet she places emphasis on all the good things she asks of Irlanda; I’m stuck between thinking she’s making herself seem naive (and so more sympathetic?) and Irlanda nasty or herself good and Irlanda also good but sometimes bad. If she dislikes Irlanda so much, then why does she treat her like she’s the only way to stave off nightmares?
A few quotes stick in my mind. The one about satisfaction with results sounds familiar, and it brings back to mind Natalia’s misquote.
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Natalia and Irlanda represent two competing ways of being female. I find their conversation while going through the chests to be especially telling in this respect. Especially the moment when Natalia brings up the toffee apples.
It’s good that you noticed the part about Natalia’s belief that obeying is a road to freedom. That’s a clue to the entire novel.
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I think I see what you mean. Natalia’s deliberate avoidance of her anger at Irlanda makes me think she’s the kind of person who just wants no responsibilities. She also speaks of mistakes again, and keeps talking about sleep, which is hard to follow. Meanwhile Irlanda is so obsessed with the appearance of being perfect that she’ll lie and cheat to get it, which makes her flaws stand out all the more. And they’re jealous of each other because each one appears perfect to the other–or is it that each one represents what the other needs to continue with her way of life? After all, Natalia only wants to obey someone, and she makes the perfect target for Irlanda, because she’ll do what Irlanda says. Natalia also seems to avoid unpleasant things, which is good for Irlanda. Yet she also harps on curses and ghosts, which she finds unpleasant but cannot escape. I still think it might be guilt of some kind.
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“She also speaks of mistakes again, and keeps talking about sleep, which is hard to follow.”
– Big sleep is a synonym for death. Falling asleep also requires relinquishing control which is the main problem of all insomniacs.
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“Meanwhile Irlanda is so obsessed with the appearance of being perfect that she’ll lie and cheat to get it, which makes her flaws stand out all the more.”
– Remember, though, that we don;t really know anything about Irlanda. We know what Natalia wants to communicate to us about Irlanda.
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True. I’m forgetting that representation does not equal to what something is. It’s so easy to slip into Natalia’s mind, to take her words as truth. Who, then, does Natalia really dislike–is it Irlanda, or herself? The strongest emotions she ever expresses are fear for herself and dislike for Irlanda. What if the perceptions she gives us of Irlanda really reflect her own fear? Maybe she not only fears death, but also an independent life. She makes Irlanda undesirable in an attempt to justify her own unquestioning obedience. In that sense, the questions she’s asking herself as to whether she’s awake or dreaming make perfect sense: if to her to sleep is to lose control of death, and her jealousy of Irlanda is a loss of control over everything she works toward in the waking world, then she has to wonder if she’s sleeping.
What’s a “Meccano?”
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I don’t know what to say at this development. It’s not hugely surprising–I began to come to a similar conclusion before I read it, and there were lots of clues. She did it for control, didn’t she? Control of her own life. And then that goes back to the chapter when I noticed her comment on children being able to make mistakes. Does she see them all as mistakes?
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Did you get what she’s planning to do with the little sister?
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If it has to do with foxglove, then yes. She kept saying things about her sister and Irlanda all at once, it was hard to tell. But by the end it’s unmistakable.
She’s so apathetic about it all, too. I’d be astonished, but when I think about it closely it was there all along. Is the whole story nothing but Natalia’s justification for her actions?
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Good catch! Most critics don’t get it at all. One critic’s article really scared me when it said: “Rosario, one of the central characters of the novel. . .” I scoured the novel in search of a Rosario, condemning myself for being a lousy, careless reader. Finally, I realized that the critic confused the names Rosario and Sagrario.
” Is the whole story nothing but Natalia’s justification for her actions?”
– It’s a story of a woman who will transgress everything to defend her right to. . . obey. A strong, powerful, manipulative character whose central goal is to be. . . weak and never grow up. This is a huge trend in modern stories of female development. I find it fascinating.
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I never realized how scary that trend is until now. Natalia reminds me of Hannibal the Cannibal, except Hannibal also had a scary insight into the human psyche.
It’s so strange, the way Natalia will actually disobey the law so she can live her perfect life in perfect obedience. It’s like a twisted 1984, with the protagonist breaking the fundamental law of society with the intent of actually making the society force him to obey. Except Natalia’s goal is more counter-intuitive than that; she actually speaks repeatedly of growing up. To her, of course, growing up consists of staying a child, which parallels what she says in one of the earlier chapters. I can’t stop thinking about it.
“One critic’s article really scared me when it said: “Rosario, one of the central characters of the novel. . .” I scoured the novel in search of a Rosario, condemning myself for being a lousy, careless reader. Finally, I realized that the critic confused the names Rosario and Sagrario.”
-That would scare me too. How can a mistake like that even happen?
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“That would scare me too. How can a mistake like that even happen?”
– I have a worse story. A very famous critic analyzed the ending of a novel where an ex-husband brutally beat his former wife. He bludgeoned the woman within an inch of her life to punish her for leaving him. As a result, the brutalized wife submits to the abuser. The (male) critic arrives at a conclusion that this is a positive, optimistic ending and that the husband and wife will now be very happy together. I was TRAUMATIZED by that critical study.
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Will try to find it too.
I recently ended reading “The Member of the Wedding” by Carson McCullers. Have you read it too? If no, then it’s recommended.
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This is uncanny!!! I bought a used copy of “The Member of the Wedding” yesterday. 🙂 Wow, great minds do think alike. 🙂
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Would love to hear what you think about it. 🙂
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Sounds really interesting! I just ordered a copy; once I read it, we can discuss.
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Oh, forgot to tell you — I read “No Name” based on your recommendation, and loved it!
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Oh, I’m so glad to hear that!!!
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Great recommendation, thank you.
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