Álvaro Pombo
Author of La fortuna de Matilda Turpin
About the Author
Works by Álvaro Pombo
Associated Works
The Origins of Desire: Modern Spanish Short Stories (Modern European Short Stories) (1993) — Contributor — 14 copies
Amores de mujer : (de los 15 a los 70 ) — Contributor — 2 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Álvaro Pombo
- Legal name
- Pombo, Álvaro
- Birthdate
- 1939-06-23
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- Spain
- Country (for map)
- Spain
- Birthplace
- Santander, Spain
- Education
- Complutense University of Madrid
Birkbeck College, the University of London - Awards and honors
- Académico de la Real Academia Española
Miembro de la Real Academia Española (2004-)
Members
Reviews
Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 41
- Also by
- 2
- Members
- 712
- Popularity
- #35,611
- Rating
- 3.0
- Reviews
- 20
- ISBNs
- 108
- Languages
- 9
Pombo — who grew up in Santander himself — follows Virginia's psychological development with an almost Proustian level of detail, as she wavers on the edge of falling in love with Anselmo (who sometimes seems more interested in her cousin Gabriel) and gets involved with a couple of shady spiritualists, the Bárcenas, who are clearly hoping to put her in touch with the deceased Casimiro. We, of course, know that the destruction of the clever and beautiful but sadly useless Virginia is going on in parallel with the Spanish political earthquakes that are about to render her kind of life and the whole society she lives in totally irrelevant, but those are happening out of our sight: the focus remains tightly on Virginia and her quasi-feudal household.
A slow, gentle, poignant but ultimately rather merciless book. Death is death, entropy increases, and consolations are illusory.… (more)