Clarissa's Blog

I finished Sarah Barquinero’s novel The Smartest Girl I Know. It’s an excellent novel by a young Spanish writer about the complexities of the modern dating life. It’s even somewhat better than Jem Calder’s novel I Want You to Be Happy that explores the same themes. Barquinero is braver and more ambitious than Calder. She writes for a Spanish-language publisher and audience and can afford to be more straightforward.

Both novels address the weird myth that women’s sexuality is identical to that of gay men. Young women are desperately unhappy because they are forced into behaviors which are completely alien and uncomfortable to them. But they have no idea how to tell not only others but themselves that they don’t want a life of endless promiscuity with a rotating roster of no-name partners. They want love, a relationship, marriage, and children. Having to pretend that they don’t exacts a steep psychological payment.

Where both novels fail is in explaining the behavior of the male characters in their late 30s who are perishing of loneliness and self-disgust, yet remain unable to form a stable relationship with a woman. These are high-prestige men who have an easy access to a harem of eager, besotted, pretty, and much younger women. If you’ve met the type, you know that Barquinero and Calder are right. As they start pushing forty, these men are anything but happy. The descriptions of their alcoholism, self-hatred, and efforts to sabotage their careers depicted in both novels are very realistic. Neither book, however, explains why these men are unable to snap out of the self-destructive behavior.

I have no insight into these men either. It’s completely against my nature to be one of a platoon of eager young things battling each other for the attentions of one capricious dude. I understand what motivates the female platoon but these men are a mystery to me. The ones I’ve known who are like that are all on antidepressants and have serious issues with addiction. The lifestyle is not making them happy. At 20, yes, absolutely. They’re in paradise. At 40, though, not so much.

Calder’s novel doesn’t show it for reasons that I explained before, but Barquinero does make it clear that good, positive, serious men who do offer a serious relationship and a profound connection are often rejected by young women who are hoping to win the lottery by attaching themselves to a wealthier, more prestigious man. This is a bad gamble that almost never pays off, but that doesn’t stop anybody.

As a male author writing in English, Calder is forced to be a lot kinder to women than Barquinero is. In the Spanish author’s novel, young women prattle endlessly about feminism and female solidarity while treating each other in most atrocious ways, as they battle for a short-lived turn in a prestigious man’s bed.