I don’t like historical novels because it’s almost impossible for an author not to project his subjectivity onto people who lived centuries earlier and to avoid botching vocabulary in painful ways.
Juan Manuel de Prada, however, gets as close as it’s possible to transmitting the Zeitgeist of 16th-century Spain and writes in a language that does justice to the events he describes. The Diamond Castle is a novel about St Teresa of Ávila, the great Spanish saint, mystic, and author. It’s fashionable to condescend to St Teresa, ascribing her mystic experiences to the sexual frustrations of a nun. I have always despised this approach that reduces a person of extraordinary greatness to genital obsessions. Prada finds the courage to accept St Teresa’s religious beliefs as not only sincere but valuable. He writes about the saint’s conflict with the Princess of Éboli and gently, without a drop of didacticism shows that a life which pursues nothing but sexual joys is empty and thwarted.
This is an excellent novel that brings to life the intense religious ebullience of the era. Like everything by Prada, it’s extremely well-written. If you love the Spanish language, you can’t fail to enjoy the novel. I always get touched to tears when I see somebody inhabit the language like Prada does.
Prada also has a light touch as a novelist. Nothing in The Diamond Castle feels like he’s making a point. You have to tease out the meaning, and that is unusual for historical fiction. Only too often its authors beat you over the head with the Very Important Lesson they want to transmit.
This is a novel where people sit around and talk about their love of God for 500 pages, and it’s not boring. I’m not a Catholic and much of the doctrine is alien to me but still it’s not boring at all.
What a great novel and what a wonderful life where such books exist and we can read them.
Clarissa's Blog 