AUTHOR: El Torres and Alberto Belmonte
PUBLISHER: Nuevo Nueve Editores S.L.
GENRE: Graphic novel
READER’S NAME: Lynn Leazer
DATE: August 15th, 2023
Galdós y la Miseria is a fascinating blending of facts from Benito Pérez Galdós’ life and characters and situations from his various novels. The story line is full of suspense, intrigue, and drama and jumps between Galdos’ youth and old age. As the blind elderly Galdós attends the unveiling of a statue of himself and navigates Madrid with the help of a lazarillo, he encounters and interacts with several of his fictional characters along the way, most notably la Miseria. The author uses flashbacks and switches time periods from chapter to chapter, so it’s a bit of a puzzle that requires the reader to be patient with some initial confusion as the story becomes clearer after a few chapters. Nonetheless, the ending is a cliff hanger with an eye toward the sequel, which I would happily read.
This blending of fact and fiction seems very modern and a technique popular among contemporary authors that should appeal to readers, although some knowledge of Galdós, his literary work, and late 19th C.-early 20th C. history and culture of Spain are necessary to fully appreciate this book. That is my only caveat about the suitability of this book for the U.S. audience. The final author’s note about the book explains the author’s admiration for Galdós, the themes of the book, and the writing process he and the illustrator followed. For me, this “afterword” was as interesting to read as the story itself and would certainly help the unfamiliar reader to understand better the importance of Galdós and the playful intersection of his biography, his work, and this book.
A quick Google search turned up references to quite a few fairly acclaimed authors that had written themselves into their books somehow, (Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut, Milan Kundera, to name a few), but I did not find any mention of books by a different author that portray a famous author and his own literary creations as main characters. This approach seems quite an innovative and creative way to pay homage to one’s literary “hero” and create a new piece of art at the same time.
The illustrations are striking and well executed and do help move the story along, sometimes without any text at all. However, I must admit to having very little experience reading graphic novels, so can’t opine as to how they compare to illustrations in other graphic novels.
The language is fairly straightforward with some colloquialisms and non-standard usage, but shouldn’t present undue difficulty for a professional translator. Perhaps the most difficult task would be translating the proper names of the characters, which are often puns or have double meanings in Spanish.
All in all, Galdós y la Miseria is a very enjoyable graphic novel, well-written and illustrated, that will appeal to readers of the genre that have some understanding of Spanish literature, history, and culture.
