El cuento español de 1970 a 2000. Cuatro escritores de Madrid: Francisco Umbral, Rosa Montero, Almudena Grandes y Javier Marías (review)

El cuento español de 1970 a 2000 is a fascinating approach to a minor and frequently overlooked literary genre: the short story. The author traces a well informed history of the Spanish short story from its genesis until its most recent manifestations. This historical recount is complete with critical and sociological discussions on the matter.

What the author intends to prove in this book is the connection between the short story and the society in which it is produced. Once this connection is established, the author understands the short story to be a metaphor, a way to comprehend, in this case, the society of Spain. In order to illustrate this idea, Azucena Mollejo focuses on short stories that have families at their core, and uses these families, a small, somewhat basic unit, as the starting point for the analysis of the whole society.

The book is divided into six chapters plus a bibliography and a set of appendixes. Chapter one corresponds to the previously described introduction. Chapters two through five correspond with each one of the authors from the title and must be read as monographies. Chapter six is the conclusion.

The book is well written and structured. In my opinion, one of its highlights is the level of research. Though sometimes the critical content may prove a bit difficult for the casual reader, it must be said that this book reads well.

If forced to find issues with this study, two must be pointed out: the first one has to do with the randomness of the chosen authors. The only thing that justifies their selection is the fact that they are from Madrid, which, for the author, seems to stand for the whole of Spain. This is clearly not the case since portrayals of the family in works by southern authors and those from strong regionalist areas at times differ greatly from those depicted in this text. The second issue is the fact that this book often reads more as a sociological study and not as literary criticism.

This is a highly enjoyable book, very informative and surprising. It serves as a good starting point for those not familiar with this subject, yet it is also complex and deep enough to be useful to those with previous knowledge of this theme. Although a bit heavy on sociological theory, this book is easy to recommend.