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The desire to learn about 20th Spanish (not Latin American) literature has brought me to the major authors of the final decades of the 19th century, such as Emilia Pardo Bazán. I checked out two books by her: Los pazos de Ulloa (her most famous novel) and Insolación, a shorter novel written a few years later, which I decided to read first because I had a couple of days with relatively little work to do and I needed a book that could be read and finished in those two days. I didn't want to leave her longer novel unfinished.

The central episode of Insolación involves an outing to the countryside to see a religious site (the fields of San Isidro) and the whole carnival show that surrounds it, with a cast of street performers, sideshow acts and various lowlifes of the Madrid suburbs in the final quarter of the 19th century. The two participants in the outing are the Marchioness Asís Taboada, a noble widow, and Diego Pacheco, a southerner from Cadiz who speaks with a distinctive accent. Asís met him the night before at a little get-together, and she randomly runs into him as she's heading to the church to hear mass. He surprisingly asks her to go with him to see the sights of San Isidro, and against her best judgement she accepts. He's handsome and he's got a nice way with words, and they have a good time as they head out into the countryside. The night before, people had been talking about the appalling state of Spanish morals, and mention was made of places like San Isidro, where all sorts of riffraff surround a religious landmark. Asís probably didn't imagine herself heading out to San Isidro the next day as she partook in that conversation. But here they are, and the sun is beating down on them, and they stop to eat at a food stall, they drink some wine and are amused by some gypsies who want to read Asís' palm (and get some free wine and money), and it's so hot and the sun is relentless, and Asís feels good but then she doesn't, she's had too much of the sun's brutal rays and she swoons and she's taken for a spell of rest in the home of some poor countryfolk, and Pacheco caresses her, then it's back to Madrid...

The second half of the story relates the romantic and social fallout of Pacheco and Asis' excursion. Asis feels ashamed about the whole thing and wants her new suitor to recede back out of her life. But he's persistent and keeps on showing up and pressuring her to meet him one more time. She has some discussions with her platonic friend Gabriel Pardo about moral issues and he seems to show certain sympathy toward women who have amorous adventures, since men are basically applauded for being Don Juans and romancing the ladies, whereas women are considered sullied by any deviation from honorable chastity. She considers telling him, and he's on the verge of figuring things out on his own, but she never spills the beans. She figures she'll just get out of town for summer vacation early and head back to her provincial home, but she's not able to leave without seeing Pacheco a few more times.

I enjoyed this book. The scenes out in the countryside in the hot sun were intense, almost hallucinogenic, with a cast of grotesques filtering in and out of Asís and Pacheco's contact. In their final meeting, they go to have a meal out in the countryside and they end up being taken to a sleazy lovers' motel room in a sprawling restaurant-entertainment complex. Asís insists on keeping the doors and windows of their supposed lovenest open and the staff of the establishment are confused by these two wealthy cityfolk. There's an old begger asking them to help her daughter obtain employment in the city, and eventually two young ladies show up and Pacheco dances with them, and things get absolutely crazy. These romantic encounters in sleazy suburban locales were my favorite parts of the book, with the hot sun beating down on Asís as she goes against the societal norm and gets involved with a young gentleman from the south.

I also enjoyed the way the author represented rural and regional speech. Pacheco speaks like a southerner, and some of the people the two come across in the countryside are nearly unintelligible. Emilio Pardo Bazán showed me a Spain that I hadn't seen before, something like an extension of the 16th and 17th century picaresque world of Lazarillos and Guzmanes in late 19th century Madrid. She put suburban scenes of rural poverty and moral corruption to good use as the backdrop for a complicated love affair between a wealthy noble widow and a womanizing southerner. ( )