{"id":280406,"date":"2010-11-01T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-01T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2010\/11\/01\/latest-review-the-wrong-blood-by-manuel-de-lope\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:10:01","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:10:01","slug":"latest-review-the-wrong-blood-by-manuel-de-lope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2010\/11\/01\/latest-review-the-wrong-blood-by-manuel-de-lope\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest Review: "The Wrong Blood" by Manuel de Lope"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest addition<\/a> to our Reviews Section<\/a> is a piece by Erika Howard on Manuel de Lope’s The Wrong Blood<\/em>, which was translated from the Spanish by John Cullen and available from Other Press. <\/p>\n

Manuel de Lope has published fourteen books in his native Spain, but this is the first of his works to be translated into English. Based on the reviews of The Wrong Blood<\/em> that I’ve read, hopefully this won’t be his last. Even the NY Times<\/em> gave it (and translator John Cullen) some love in this past Sunday’s Book Review:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

This absorbing novel \u2014 the first from the distinguished Spanish author to be translated into English \u2014 is full of mild sensations. Mild humor (bacalao<\/em> soaked for dinner in the toilet tank) gives way to mild horror (a woman bends over another\u2019s baby with \u201cthe posture of certain all-consuming insects\u201d), which in turn yields to mild philosophizing (on the \u201cadmiration that denizens of the rural world feel for folding things\u201d). At times, the mildness turns to provocation, as when the main character, a simple yet baffling woman named Mar\u00eda Antonia Etxarri, watches a troop of soldiers and has \u201ca feeling that one of those soldiers, if not more than one, was going to rape her.\u201d The placidity with which she faces this prospect is galvanic. But de Lope\u2019s languid sentences, artfully translated by John Cullen, continue to unfurl, and you find yourself sinking back into the narrative as if it were quicksand.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Erika Howard is interning with Open Letter this semester, and this is her first book review . . . Here’s how it opens:<\/p>\n

\n

When you imagine a typical \u201cwar novel,\u201d what do you think of? Most people would answer bloody battlefields and brother-against-brother dramatics, lack of supplies and bleak outlooks. However, The Wrong Blood<\/em> is undeniably a novel that is centered around war, and yet these things are only minimally addressed. Instead, de Lope\u2019s novel focuses on the impact of war on civilians\u2014those not directly engaged in fighting, or (generally) in any of the more violent aspects of it, but affected nonetheless. Specifically, it focuses on two women, and how their lives were changed and intertwined through a course of events set in motion by the war.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

One of these women is Isabel Cruces, an upper-class woman who marries Captain Julen Herr\u00e1iz. Her husband is sent off to war, and she is widowed not long after. Her tragedy is directly connected to Maria Antonia Extarri, the daughter of a former inn keeper, who is abandoned as a teenager when her parents flee the war and their home. Maria is raped when soldiers take refuge at her family\u2019s inn, and, through a series of events (both emotional and physical), she eventually ends up as a maid to Isabel. From the beginning, there is an acknowledgement of an odd bond between the two women, but no explanation as to why for the better part of the book. Manuel de Lope does manage to keep it in the front of the reader\u2019s mind, however, referencing it off and on, clearly but without overdoing it, as in this passage . . . <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To read that passage and the rest of the review, simply click here.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest addition to our Reviews Section is a piece by Erika Howard on Manuel de Lope’s The Wrong Blood, which was translated from the Spanish by John Cullen and available from Other Press. Manuel de Lope has published fourteen books in his native Spain, but this is the first of his works to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67456],"tags":[36016,33906,33896,1906,1646,6516,36006],"class_list":["post-280406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-erika-howard","tag-john-cullen","tag-manuel-de-lope","tag-other-press","tag-review","tag-spanish-literature","tag-wrong-blood"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280406","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=280406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312556,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280406\/revisions\/312556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}