Dave Boling: GUERNICA
I’m a bit late reviewing this novel, which was
published in 2008. Critics have compared it to Captain Corelli's Mandolin and The English Patient. Its historical and romantic sweep even brings an echo of War and Peace although, sadly, peace does not come to Guernica within the time-frame of the novel.
The title is enough to send shivers down your spine,
if you recall Picasso’s famous mural. The artist appears in the background of
the story; we are shown him conceiving and executing the painting. Franco is another
background character, the ‘generalissimo’ who tried to destroy the Basque
culture and presided over decades of brutality for all Spaniards. The German aviator who leads the bombing raid over Guernica is a Von Richthofen, a cousin
of the ‘Red Baron’, suave and gentlemanly, and ruthless.
At the heart of the story are the three Ansotegui
brothers (Basque names are as intimidating as Tolstoy’s patronymics), three motherless
boys whose father abandons them. One will become a fisherman, one a carpenter,
the third a priest. We follow them from boyhood to manhood and watch as they work
and play, dance and drink, fall out and fall in love. Guernica is, like
many of the great novels, a superior kind of soap opera (very superior). While
you read this, you are waiting for the bombs to fall. The history we know casts
a dark cloud over the story. On the day of the bombing you wonder – and you
care deeply – who, if anyone, is going to survive.
This was Dave Boling’s first novel. His wife is from the Pays Basque. He writes simply
and vividly about the horrors of the Civil War. A villager taken away by the
Guardia “was gone as if erased.”
After the bombing, in a makeshift mortuary, “The undead shuffled past, staring into the faces, praying to find loved
ones and praying not to find loved ones.”
The post-bombing story introduces two British
characters and a hint that there can be light after the most terrible darkness.
I’m a novelist. I sometimes kill off my own characters. It’s rare that a novel moves me to tears. This one did.
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| Picasso's GUERNICA |
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