The novel Vera by Juan del Val is so bad that it left me physically unwell. I don’t say it because the novel is of a sensibility that is so lefty that it’s almost comical. My favorite Spanish writers are all gay communists and I think they are literary geniuses. Art, to me, stands so far above politics that I can’t begin to be bothered by artists’ political views. Juan del Val could have been a pro-Ukraine, deeply Orthodox, far-right dude, and I would have despised this novel just as much.
There’s no verbal or plot-related cliché in existence that Juan del Val failed to use in Vera. The characters read like parodies of very tired stereotypes hammered down with the earnestness of a psychotic woodpecker. The story is so predictable it gives one a toothache.
Vera is also standard leftist propaganda of the most primitive kind. It’s message is that women should be rich and get sexually liberated by buying sex services from men. But when men buy sex services from women, that’s bad. Women should be buying a lot of expensive crap to express themselves. Men should sit and wait to be bought by self-expressing women. Where should women get the money to make all these purchases? From rich men! Who are bad and evil because they make money instead of waiting to be bought by self-expressing women.
Now you understand why I feel nauseous. I urgently need to read something good to erase the aftertaste
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