I came across Andr\u00e9s Barba by chance one day in 2002, browsing at a Spanish bookstore. The book I stood perusing sounded intriguing: the story of an adolescent girl who lives in a Madrid apartment with her prostitute mother and stripper sister. Despite my interest in the story, however, the literary endeavor seemed not just improbable but almost risible. Here was a novel presenting the lives of several troubled women through the eyes of a less-than-savvy, fourteen-year old girl as written by a man – one who was just twenty-six years old. I bought it, I confess, to prove myself right: the protagonist\u2019s voice could not possibly be convincing. Five years later I am still astounded by the heart-breaking tenderness and naked honesty of Barba\u2019s prose.<\/p>\n
Katia\u2019s sister, the protagonist, is presented as achingly naive, and her almost saint-like innocence filters each of her observations, deflecting the horrors of the harsh world she inhabits. With utterly uncomplicated candor, she reinterprets prostitution, drug addiction, death and religion, and we are privy to all of her pre-moral reflections. Having quit school, Katia\u2019s sister (who is never named) spends her days cleaning, watching nature shows on TV, and marveling at the tourists in Madrid\u2019s Plaza Mayor who wear such bright colors, say such charming things. She comprises the sole affective bond in the family, the only selfless constant in her all-female clan (Mam\u00e1 is often gone for days at a time; Katia works late at the strip club; grandmother\u2019s Alzheimer\u2019s is progressing daily). And her perspective is a redemptive one. Daily trials, whether transcendent, morbid, or run-of-the-mill, are all battled with an innocence that ultimately bathes everything in its glow, humanizing us all. At the start of the novel we read:<\/p>\n
\nMam\u00e1 hadn\u2019t been home for a week. Katia had just turned eighteen and she\u2019d given her a pair of ladybug earrings that she hadn\u2019t liked. Anyone could have seen it in her forced smile, her gesture of resignation when she asked her to put them on; but that night she went to bed happy in the knowledge that she\u2019d given the perfect gift. Three days later she saw that Katia still hadn\u2019t worn them, not even once. It didn\u2019t trouble her, though. She remembered when she was eight and Mam\u00e1 had given her a pink watch that she liked so much she didn\u2019t dare put it on, for fear she might break it. She\u2019d take it out at night, watch the second hand slowly caress the quarters of an hour, and then put it back in the same imperturbable case in which a year later it would stop ticking, and then in subsequent years gather dust, purging its sin of having been too beautiful. Maybe that\u2019s why Katia hadn\u2019t worn the earrings yet, because they were just too pretty.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
At this point, we are left wondering: is her reaction a defense mechanism, or is she just not too bright? It\u2019s not long, though, before we realize this is no act; the protagonist is not stupid, she\u2019s simply incapable of feeling \u2013 or picking up on \u2013 malice, cruelty, or bitterness. In Katia\u2019s sister\u2019s world, people aren\u2019t bad; they have concrete rationale for their actions. Their behavior can be explained by a phrase she hears her mother use frequently on the phone, \u201cMen aren\u2019t evil; they just want to get laid.\u201d <\/p>\n
Katia’s Sister<\/i> is a remarkable first book from a very young writer who has gone on to prove his mettle in subsequent novels. This one was finalist for the 19th Herralde Prize in Spain, has been translated into French, Dutch, German, and Italian, and is currently being made into a film in Holland. Rafael Chirbes, one of Spain\u2019s greatest living novelists, has called Barba\u2019s prose \u201cimprescindible\u201d, often translated as \u201cvital\u201d though the urgency is more intense. His writing is \u201cundowithoutable\u201d.<\/p>\n
Katia\u2019s Sister<\/i>
\nAndr\u00e9s Barba
\nAnagrama, 2001<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I came across Andr\u00e9s Barba by chance one day in 2002, browsing at a Spanish bookstore. The book I stood perusing sounded intriguing: the story of an adolescent girl who lives in a Madrid apartment with her prostitute mother and stripper sister. Despite my interest in the story, however, the literary endeavor seemed not just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[8346,8326,8336,7766],"class_list":["post-258106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-anagrama","tag-andres-barba","tag-katias-sister","tag-lisa-dillman"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258106"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":360846,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258106\/revisions\/360846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}