Cornell University Press
A bizarre novel by
,.
CAMILO JOSE CELA
"one of the best of Spain's
modern novelists"
- N.
Y.
Times Book Review
/ '
M~.
gALDWELL
~PEA~
TOHER~ON
Translated by
J.
S.
BERNSTEIN
with the cooperation of
the author, and incorporating all of the revisions from
the latest Spanish edition, including a new postscript.
This strange and haunting study of an eccentric English–
woman's incestuous love for her dead son has long been admired
by Spanish readers. Now, for the first time, it is available in
English in this richly poetic, authorized translation.
"Many a novelist would give his best typing finger to be able to
evoke the bitterness, insight and compassion that novelist Cela
packs into brief scenes that plunge straight at the heart."
-Time
Magazine
224 pages.
$5.95 cloth; $2.45 paper
Chapter
36:
It
was always the elegant thing to do, my son,
to commit suicide with Verona!' It's a suicide
for people, for example, who have loved a lot,
for people who've never lacked anything,
absolutely anything.
Their souls progressively take on an opal–
escence and an uncertain air, and their bodies
languish, little by little, with an elegant sad–
ness, with a studied and pleasing abandon.
Veronal, my son, ought to be taken with
champagne, and at night, like resignation.
Women, after taking their Veronal, can
al10w themselves to be loved by a passionate
and respectful lover, by a slow and obliging
lover; that is proper. \Vhat is not proper, my
dear, is the writing of farewell notes.
CopYrigl.t
© 1968
b!l Cornell University
Cornell University Press
ITHACA, NEW YORK 14850
