Temps enrere is the definitive demonstration of the narrative talent of Ramon Solsona (Barcelona, 1950), a novel written in old age, with the human density of someone who has lived a long time and wants to offer a testimony of that life through interposed people: Elvira and Tomàs, a couple who met in Germany, where he was studying for a doctorate on earthquakes and she had gone to work –in the years of the economic miracle–, at first in a biscuit factory and, later –thanks to an innate curiosity for the language and many hours of study–, as an interpreter and translator. They met on a carnival night but it was not a carnival love but the love of a lifetime.
I say it's a great display of narrative talent because the novel is 700 pages long. It's very well edited, by the way: 1,800 characters per page with generous handwriting, it flows and you never feel stuck; I take these things into account. Is it a story to fill 700 pages? Probably not. It is written with a single register: an omniscient narration in which the narrative voice tells the stories and the reasons for the stories of all the characters, from the main couple, to the parents, the children, the children's partners, the neighbors. of the town of Priorat, of the Barcelona staircase, of the Colegio de la Salle and of the German emigration.
In the midst of this story of life, narratively homogeneous (there are no dialogues or changes of focus), Solsona places some inserts with verbatim phrases that reflect the richness of local ways of speaking and idioms. In all Solsona's books we find a philological component (let's remember DG or L 'home of the suitcase, so different from this current book, where he shone by giving the word to the characters). They also include a social or sociological component. Solsona places men and women in a collective and sentimental framework, surrounded by songs, radio programs and car brands.
Being a story temporarily inverted, some stories are repeated. It begins in 2003. It goes to 1990. Then to 1978. Then to 1968. Then to 1945. And it alternately focuses on Tomàs and Elvira. Duplicates are unavoidable with this procedure. Solsona explains that the Priorat winery has produced a new wine called Ricardet, in memory of Tomàs' brother, who had Down Syndrome. Then this Ricardet appears retrospectively as a young man and as a child, with some traced anecdotes. Solsona plays very well with these repetitions. And he wraps the reader in the story, which has no great secrets, no mysteries, no great conflicts, no terrible dramas.
A story written without traps or effects. Tomàs and Elvira have reached old age loving each other. Life has been good for them. One leaving a goal, the other from a bankrupt farmhouse, they have come to have a full life. And the change in the value of Priorat wine has caused an unexpected twist in the family story. With very little argument, Solsona obtains a great result.
The lesson of Temps enrere, in addition to being literary, is moral. It speaks of the triumph of love and freedom in a changing context, which goes from the postwar period with its suitcase of crimes, disappearances and reprisals, to the boom in viticulture, passing through economic emigration, the social impact of May 68, the religious crisis and the transformation of sexual customs through Elvira's relationship with her friends.
It is not a great saga, it does not talk about the past and the future of Europe. It is a small story that sometimes reminds one of Maria Barbal's books. Sustained on the basis of a great ability to narrate, as someone who explains the history of the family, without boredom, with a constant rhythm, with the magnificent spark of the farewell at the Cova del Drac between Tomàs and Mrs. Forrellad, who introduced him to sex and kept him away from the priests. For me, this is the best moment in the book. A good book, it must be said openly
