The Carpenter's Pencil - Hardcover

Rivas, Manuel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1585671452 ISBN 13: 9781585671458

Publisher: Overlook Books, 2001

Synopsis

A bestseller in Spain, The Carpenter's Pencil has been published in nine countries. Set in the dark days of the Spanish Civil War, The Carpenter's Pencil charts the linked destinies of a remarkable cast of unique characters. All are bound by the events of the Civil War-the artists and the peasants alike-and all are brought to life, in Rivas's skillful hand, with the power of the carpenter's pencil, a pencil that draws both the measured line and the artist's dazzling vision. Translated from the Galician by Jonathan Dunne.

About this title

About the Author

Manuel Rivas was born in A Coruna, Spain, in 1957.  He writes in the Galician language of northwest Spain and is well-known in his native country for his journalism and for the films made of his prize-winning novels and short stories.

From Publishers Weekly

Dr. Daniel Da Barca is a Republican hero of the Spanish Civil War, an almost folkloric figure at the center of this lyrical though frequently impenetrable import. His story is related, in the spirit of Cervantes's Exemplary Tales, in a bar, by a Galician brothel keeper to a favorite whore. Da Barca's politics and philosophy stem from what his teacher, Dr. N¢voa Santos, calls "the theory of intelligent reality" that irony and lyricism are organic parts of the human condition. Even before Franco's uprising, Da Barca's movements were tracked by a soldier named Herbal a man who conceals his moral susceptibility beneath a shell of brutality. In the first days of the war, Da Barca, along with other Republican notables, is imprisoned in Santiago. One of his fellow prisoners is a painter who is taken out and killed by a group including Herbal. On the way back, Herbal, who has picked up the carpenter's pencil that the painter had been using in prison, hears a voice in his head it is the voice of the deceased, who makes Herbal into the unwilling vessel of Da Barca's salvation. Twice Da Barca is taken out to be shot, and twice he is saved by Herbal, who later arranges for the doctor's transfer from the harsh prison at Coru¤a to the less rigorous camp at Porta Coeli, from which he manages to direct a Republican resistance group. Although Rivas's (Butterfly's Tongue) highly charged language is sometimes excessive and the narrative convoluted, his instinctive balancing of Da Barca's heroism against Herbal's brutish plebian consciousness creates a work of endearing nobility that will reward the patience of what is likely to be a very small American audience.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Overlook Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1585671452
• ISBN 13: 9781585671458
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160