Las huellas de la Guerra Civil. Mito y trauma en la narrativa de la España democrática (review)

114  Revista Hispánica Moderna 61.1 (2008) relationship between subjectivity and ruins in narratives that try to represent the past of Villa Grimaldi, a former concentration camp that was transformed into a public park during the transition. In each chapter, Lazzara brings together different forms that seek to represent Chile’s trauma either with certainty and closure , or by showing the absences and ghosts, doubts and demands, that the dictatorship created and which refuse to disappear from present-day life in Chile. My deep appreciation for this book’s accomplishments notwithstanding, there are a few points that leave me unconvinced, or wishing for more elaboration. One is the author’s use of the term ‘‘narrative,’’ which I find stimulating when it is used in relation to the definition that I quote above, but which appears at different points of the book in different guises. The problem may be more a question of voice than of terminology, but there are moments at which Lazzara seems to equate narrative with a process of exercising control over disparate elements, or reintegrating fragments into a communicable whole (for example, 30, 64, 130). If this is the nature of narrative—and it may well be—how strong can the distinction of open and closed narratives be? Would it be worth looking for another form, or another term to describe what he refers to as open narrative ? Another related point is his use of the figure of subjectivity, which often seems to determine narrative, and place a kind of closure on it, even when it is ostensibly open. This is the effect of the term ‘‘lenses of memory,’’ which Lazzara uses to ground the figure of narrative in the framing of his book (31–32), and which forms a central trope in the final chapter. The final chapter’s discussion of subjectivity and ruins is really about subjectivity among ruins, and never considers the sense in which subjectivity—and narrative, too (not only subjects in narratives)—are themselves in ruins. Finally, there are points at which the comparative approach that structures each section of the book, in which Lazzara alternates between two or more representative cases, leaves the reader without the critical tools to meaningfully distinguish between them. The effect of this at times suggests a liberal respect for differences of opinion, which is another version of the neoliberal trope of consensus that Lazzara critiques in his introduction. This was the impression I was left with in his discussion of Nelly Richard and Nancy Guzmán (24–28), throughout Chapter 3, and in the prefatory description of ‘‘the two Angelicas’’ (one of whom supported Pinochet and the one who rebelled against him, 5–10). In the end, Lazzara comes out on the side of aesthetic practices that resist closure, and in spite of his gesture of gratitude to the two Angelicas, Lazzara’s political loyalties to the left are evident throughout the book, but there are times at which his voice could have been a little stronger about such matters. In spite of these considerations, Chile in Transition is an excellent book, and will prove invaluable to scholars, teachers, and students for years to come. KATE JENCKES, University of Michigan moreno-nuño, carmen. Las huellas de la Guerra Civil. Mito y trauma en la narrativa de la España democrática. Madrid: Ediciones Libertarias, 2006. 429 páginas. La teorı́a de Pierre Nora sobre los espacios de memoria (lieux de mémoire)— utilizada anteriormente en los estudios culturales españoles por crı́ticos como Reviews  115 Joan Ramon Resina, Christina Dupláa, Francine Cate-Arries e Isolina Ballesteros —es el punto de partida de Carmen Moreno-Nuño para paliar el proceso de olvidar el trauma de la Guerra Civil al que se aboca ‘‘la desmemoriada España’’ (16) en las primeras décadas de la democracia. La autora establece con precisión que su estudio de cuatro novelas y un cuento—de Javier Marı́as (El siglo, 1983), Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (El pianista, 1985), Julio Llamazares (Luna de lobos, 1985), Antonio Muñoz Molina (El jinete polaco, 1991) y Manuel Talens (‘‘Ucronı́a’’, 1994)—se enclava dentro de los procesos...