Tear This Heart Out

I didn't enjoy this novel, set in 1930's post-revolutionnary Mexico. The book opens with the marriage at an early age of the narrator, Catalina, to a much older general, Andres Ascencio, and ends about 15 years later with Ascencio's death. Catalina is my main problem; I found her wholly unlikeable, and often found myself wanting to reach into the novel and give her a slap. I know that this is supposed to be a feminist novel about a woman's journey towards self-determination in a macho world, but in fact her "journey" seems to take her from submissive wife who refuses to believe her husband is involved in mass killings despite all the evidence, to selfish woman who, at best, ignores her children completely ("it was years since I'd last show more played with my children") or, at worst, lives out her many affairs under their noses. Yes, I know we've seen the heroines of the great 19th century adultery novels behave like this, but Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina and Ana Ozores get away with it by being better-drawn characters in better-written novels. show less

Catalina es una adolescente cuando conoce al general Andrés Ascencio, candidato a gobernador del Estado de Puebla. En poco tiempo se enamoran y casan. Paulatinamente, Catalina descubre un lugar que ella, sin experiencia ni madurez, ocupa en la turbulenta vida pública y amorosa del general. Pero Catalina no acepta la forma de vida que se le impone. Ella sigue siendo una criatura apasionada e imaginativa en un contexto social engañoso, donde la mujer representa una figura exquisita, pero marginal.

En el México postrevolucionario de los años treinta y cuarenta todo parece suceder como en un vértigo, y para Catalina, protagonista y narradora, escenas y emociones se consumen en el aire con la radiante velocidad de un fósforo.
Ambición, matrimonio, adulterio, sacrificio y venganza; la historia amorosa de la temperamental y apasionada Catalina Ascencio...

Clásico de la narrativa contemporánea. Relata el ascenso de la mujer a su propia identidad. Obra llevada al cine por Roberto Sneider