TEAR THIS HEART OUT (ARRANCAME LA VIDA) by Angeles Mastretta Looking for a summer read that doesn't feel like a trifle

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Listeners, readers, welcome to the Foxed Page, where we dive
deep into the very best books. You'll come away with
a richer understanding of the text at hand, all while
learning to read everything a little better. I'm kimberly Ford,
one time adjunct professor at Berkeley, best selling author and
PhD in literature. Today we are really leaning into the
Spanish lit part of that PhD.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
We're going to take a good look.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Today at Araka me Lavida by Angreeles Mastretaanda. We are
not going to speak very much in Spanish, although I
did realize when I was preparing the lecture that, of
course my copy of the book is in Spanish, which
means that as we're looking at some of these different passages,
I'll either be paraphrasing or I'll be doing a little

(00:49):
bit of on the fly translation, which is always kind
of an interesting experience. So we always begin with this
question of why read this book. I love this book.
It was published in nineteen eighty five. I thought I
read it right when it came out, but that is
not possible because I was in high school and I
was actually studying French at the time, so I must
have studied it later in college or maybe even in

(01:10):
graduate school. It is a book that I have loved
from the start, and it is a book that I
returned to occasionally, and with all amazing books, every time
I return to it there is something totally different that
it has to offer. A lot of what is appealing
about the book remains the same.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
There's a lightness in the tone.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Our main protagonist, Gatarina Gusman, is so appealing in so
many ways. The description of the Mexican Revolution in the
immediate period following the revolution is so rich and so interesting,
but told from this kind of familial, domestic space that
makes it really accessible. Although of course it is super confusing,

(01:49):
because the Mexican Revolution and the post revolutionary period are
in fact super confusing, and that is not something that
must writea is shying away from. But in many ways,
the romance in Me really leans into the idea of
this as a love story. And one of the questions
I had when I was going back to it today
is this sense of how is it that Mastretta is

(02:10):
giving us this very strong protagonist in Katarina Gusman, but
also allowing her to be so appealing when in fact
She's deeply in love, at least for a very long
time with this general who she meets when she is
fifteen years old and he's twenty years older than she is,
and they end up marrying, and he is incredibly corrupt,
and he has a womanizer, and he's incredibly violent. So

(02:30):
as I was approaching the book, I had this kind
of disconnect because I was like, wait, I remember this
book book being profoundly romantic, but I also remember it
being steeped in corruption. And what I was impressed with
actually in this reading is that this book is a
real study in ambivalence. And I mean that kind of
in the truest sense of the word, of like having
two different sentiments that are competing with one another. I

(02:52):
will stand by my argument that, in fact, Katarina is
very much in love with Andres, but I will also
argue that there are things about him that are absolutely reprehensible,
and she has a willed ignorance for a long time,
and that willed ignorance is sort of chipped away at
But then as certain elements of the plot thicken, she
can no longer be so accepting of everything that her

(03:15):
husband is doing. That's a good point to let you
know we won't have any spoilers today. If you have
not read this book, it's perfect for the summer. There
is a romance and there is a lightness to it,
but there also is some depth and some real gravitas.
This is a book that is a real touchstone of
Mexican feminist literature certainly and feminist literature as a whole.

(03:37):
But there's also this incredible lightness that really does make
it so appealing. Okay, for those of you who like
an agenda. First, we're going to do a very quick
bio of Anchels Mastretta, and I'm just going to touch
on a couple of things that she has said in
interviews that I found really revealing. Then we're going to
dive in by talking about the feminism that we see
right from the start of this book. We're also going

(03:58):
to look at how that feminism is connected really closely
with the sexuality of Katalina Gusman. We're then going to
talk about the treatment of history in the book. We're
going to move on to talk about corruption and violence.
I kept thinking during this whole entire reading of Carmen Soprano,
is that Tony Soprano yeah, Carmen Soprano during that whole
entire television series, which I loved, I found myself fascinated

(04:22):
with the experience of being someone who is married to
a person who is really wreaking a lot of havoc,
someone who is really corrupt in many ways and in
fact very violent. And I really loved the experience of
being on the inside of Katalina's mind. If you're someone
who has wondered how Carmen Soprano is doing it, you
should definitely read this book. And then at the end,

(04:44):
we're going to talk about a few of the different
literary aspects of the.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Book that make it such a good piece of prose.
This is prose that is.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Very sophisticated, and for anyone who already loves it, or
for anyone who is considering it, I want to point
out some of the ways that it is very sophisticated,
because the lightness of tone can sometimes allow a reader
to think that it's a little more of a trifle
than it is. Before we dive in to the bio
of an Chiles Mastretta, I wanted to just touch briefly
on the fact that the version that I read this

(05:14):
time is a later edition of the book. I have
an edition of the book that came out in nineteen
eighty five, and I love it so much.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
It's interesting because one of.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
The aspects that I like about it are the illustrations.
As you can imagine, I am not someone who generally
loves illustrations in novels. I don't love the idea of
someone sort of shaping my vision of something that is
in fact, one of the miracles of reading is the
fact that everyone as they are reading, has the perfect
vision in their own mind, and it is different from
everyone else's. So generally I don't find it helpful to

(05:46):
have a vision imposed upon me. But I think I
loved these because they were really stylized, their black and
white line drawings, and their very kind of art deco
in this way that is so appealing. So if you
are on the YouTube, I'm going to put up an
image of that cover, and I'm going to show you
as we move through a few of the different illustrations

(06:07):
that are found.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
Throughout the book.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
I like the cover of this other one for lots
of different reasons, but I did not think it was
a big improvement. Both this cover and also the illustrations
are very literal. We have lots of like exact illustrations
of things that are happening in the book, which I
think generally is like a little goursie, It's like a
little cheeseball. But Ara Melavia really pulled it off. Okay,

(06:31):
we're going to dive in now to take a very
quick look at the biography of Angeles Mastreta. So.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
She was born in nineteen forty nine in Pela.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
She was a journalist, an author, a producer and actress.
Clearly someone who's very ambitious and very talented. She has
won many different awards for her many different novels. I
have not read anything else. I think I maybe read
Muchre de hoos Grandez, but I don't really remember it,
which actually doesn't mean I didn't read it, because, as
you know, if you're a longtime listener, I do not

(06:59):
have a great mema. She grew up in a family
of five children, and she said in an interview that
what was most prized in her family was being able
to tell a story. Well, so she was someone who
from a very young age really valued the idea of stories.
She wrote Ranka Melaviva in nineteen eighty five and she's
still alive.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
I was surprised. I listened to.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
One of the interviews that I listened to came from
a program called Aprendemos Jundos, and it actually was just
from March of this past year.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
It was very interesting.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
There was a Q and a at the end of
a very brief presentation that she gave, and I actually
don't even remember the question, but I certainly remember her answer,
which was she was talking about sexuality, which is a
huge part of the story that she was telling with
Katari Naguzman.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
But she was talking in this.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
Very kind of bold voice about how when she very
first went to Mexico to the capitol from Puebla with
the intent of becoming a journalist, she realized that she
was going to if she wanted to be taken seriously,
she was going to really have to act like a man.
And what she said in the interview in this Q
and A was that she realized that what men were

(08:09):
doing is that they were going and everybody was, you know,
sleeping with everyone. There was lots of sex being had,
there was sort of a new lover every week, and
that if she wanted to be serious and wanted to
be taken seriously that she was going to have to
do that. She made the distinction though, that she was
someone who also had deeply ingrained in her the idea
that virginity was very important.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
So she had this tension.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
Between this idea of romance and love as being important
but that virginity was very important, but also this idea
that you.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
Should be very sexually free.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
So she had this incredible statement about how she would,
you know, sleep with someone every week, but would always
be falling in love with them, and that it was
like a whole tracheria griegra every single week, like a
Greek tragedy every single week, which, as you can imagine,
I mean, I'm fairly certain that that was a fairly
kind of bold and somewhat exaggerated tail. But whenever I
hear something like that that is a little bit perhaps

(09:03):
something that has been said before, perhaps something that is a.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Bit exaggerated, there obviously is a.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
Grain of truth. And in that case it's such an
interesting thing. Catalina in the book is so sexually progressive
in many ways, in the sense that she really wants
to feel pleasure, and she really is in pursuit of
pleasure At one point she goes and learns from an
older woman exactly how to bring herself pleasure. She then
even brings some friends to the same woman so that

(09:29):
she can be sure that everybody is in fact enjoying
their bodies and their sexual lives. And again, this is
a fifteen year old girl in Mexico in the thirties.
So I was struck by this attitude towards sex, but
also just by the boldness and by the sort of
brashness of anhelez mastreta in general. Okay, we're now going

(09:50):
to dive into the book. I love the title Ranka
me lavida. I mean, first of all, I just love
the way that it sounds, but it also has many
different connotations. Here is a song by someone named Abustin Lara,
and this is not my area of specialty. I am
not someone who knows a ton about music from Mexico
of that era, but there is tons of music in

(10:12):
the book. But there was one interview that was very
interesting that talked about the fact that the book is
constructed like a bolero, which is a romantic song that
has lots to do with betrayal and tragedy, but it's
easy also to kind of overlook the fact that this
is a very.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
Violent title Lavida.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
In English, it is tear this Heart Out, which really
does not trip off the tongue, but it really speaks
to the passion that Katalina has, and it also speaks
to the violence that her husband is constantly promoting.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Quick note that there is also a movie.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
Aranka Me Lavida Tear This Heart Out, that came out,
I believe in two thousand and eight and was nominated
for an Academy Award. Okay, we're not going to dive
on into the book. So importantly, this is a book that.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
Has a first person narrator.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
We are hearing from Katalina herself, and that sounds kind
of basic and it's something that I think readers might
gloss right over it, but.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
It is really important.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
So this is a book that is really steeped in
its moment in time. Mastreta does return again and again
to this period following the Mexican Revolution, which was a
time of incredible upheaval politically and societally. And what's really
interesting here is that we are hearing from a fifteen
year old girl. She is someone who has a lot

(11:25):
of sass, for sure, and she is very strong in
many ways, but she is someone who is sort of
inside the patriarchy, and she is not pushing all that
much against the patriarchy, to be clear. In many ways,
she's very loyal to her husband, She's very loyal to
her father. We're going to get to the part about
the father, which is very interesting. But it's really important
that we are beginning with this first person narrator, because

(11:48):
it is Katarina's voice, and it is her perspective through
which we are seeing this really very fulsome description of
the revolution and its immediate aftermath. It's also important to
look at where we are starting this narration. So on
page nine, which is in my copy here, we have
this fo bars muchas Kosas Andreodras Andresios Gasamos. So essentially

(12:14):
a lot of things happen this year in this country,
and among those things, Andresa and I were married. So
it is important that we are beginning with the marriage.
We are beginning with the time when andres comes into
her life and in fact totally changes her whole entire life,
the entire trajectory of it. The book essentially ends with
the end of their marriage. I'm not going to tell

(12:35):
you anything about that, and it does feel very patriarchal
in fact, that we are talking essentially about a marriage.
But I also think there's, like, you know, a sort
of a basic question, which is that anytime you have
a first person narration, you're going to ask the question
why this person and why now? And the answer to
the question of why now is that it is her
marriage that really allows her entrance into this world that

(12:57):
she would not have seen otherwise, this world of postger,
this world of after the Revolution, where she really is
entering into a very male and very corrupt world, and
one that the reader is very eager actually to learn about.
So right from the beginning too, we also have this
very straightforward tone, which is part of the lightness that
we see throughout the novel, and it's part of the

(13:18):
reason why this book feels so easy to read. So
in the interest of following this story of what I'm
arguing is ambivalence, I do want to make the point
very clearly that throughout the book Katalina is in fact
very much in love with her husband. So right at
the very beginning, you know, he's thirty five, she's fifteen,
and we are only what three paragraphs in and at

(13:40):
the bottom she says this yoonuka bia ristosko fia nadie
consu expression de. So she's saying, I never saw anybody
with such lively eyes or someone who was so self assured.
So right from the beginning, we have this very positive sense,
not necessarily of who he is. She says, he's not
that attract and certainly her family has some reservations and

(14:03):
they're all a little bit suspicious, but there is something
right from the beginning that really draws her to him.
What's really fascinating to me is that literally two pages later,
on page eleven, so we're, you know, two pages into
the novel, and we are moving headlong into their sexual relationship,
and it's really interesting to see how that sexual relationship

(14:24):
is reflecting all sorts of feminism on.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
The part of our young Catalina.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
This is also kind of an explanation of like why
it is that she's falling for this guy who she
knows is maybe not, you know, a super upstanding citizen.
So at the bottom of page eleven, she says, takin
poreso ae cdo andrea and tekoa el negros parente melolla

(14:56):
qise rabello so he promises to show her the oce
and she's very excited about it. She's also very upfront
about the fact that she was fifteen years old, but
she really wanted things to happen to her. She has
someone who's very adventuresome right from the start, who is
someone has a large appetite for doing things that are
that are exciting and different and novel and that are
going to move her out of her, you know, her

(15:17):
tiny family, although she really does very much love her family.
And then this is on page twelve, so now we're like,
you know what, three pages, four pages into the novel,
and we have this first sexual experience between the two
of them, and she sets it up again with this
real lightness of tone. She says that, you know, she
had seen sex between bulls and horses Pito Barado Racosa,

(15:40):
but the erect penis of a man was certainly something else.
So then she goes on to have this funny thing
about she's not sure if it's going to fit, and
he sort of thinks this is charming and cute, and
we have this kind of funny light thing where she
is very upfront about the fact that she doesn't think
it's gonna fit and then just you know, very quickly
into the experience, we have this well mostly say ubi

(16:03):
iraka me busto. So right from the beginning, we have
this idea that she is having sexual pleasure. And I
have to say, there's an old adage about writing that
I learned in my three quarters of my MFA program
that I did, which is that if you want to
write a good sex scene, just just say what is happening?

Speaker 2 (16:21):
And she is very good at that.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
There isn't a lot of hyperbole, there isn't a lot
of metaphor, there isn't a lot of like sentimental.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Stuff happening here.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
She's really just telling us kind of mechanically what is
happening in a very effective way. And in fact, that
kind of matter of fact nature is in their dialogue
as well. So he essentially asks whether or not she
had an orgasm. She says no, she doesn't really understand
what he's talking about, and so then on page thirteen,
she's basically like, well, then show me how, like just
just like teach me, and he says something like it's

(16:50):
actually not something you teach, it's something you learn, which
is one of those like terrible patriarchal, you know, nonsense
kind of things. But what is so interesting right from
the start is we are having this sexual experience between
the two of them that is light, that is speaking
about female pleasure, and that's also speaking about her voice.
So we have this first person narrator who not only

(17:11):
is going to tell us the whole story, but this
is a first person narrator. This a protagonist who really
has a voice, even within the scope of the novel.
So she's really not afraid to say things to this
you know, very decorated, important general who is much more
commanding and who is twenty years older than she is,
but who is someone who clearly she's very attracted to.

(17:32):
And even just even a quick page later before they
leave this initial trip to the ocean, there's this excellent
exchange where.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
She actually gives him advice.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
She says that he'd been talking and talking and talking
the whole time, as if he were just talking to
the walls. He essentially wasn't expecting to hear anything from her,
And then she offers up this opinion, and he says,
baiaco and la signorita nosainos iyakierri di, So he's saying

(18:03):
like she doesn't even know how to have sex, but
she's like trying to manage a general or direct a general,
which is so excellent because he is appreciating that. So
the important thing here is we are four pages in
and we have covered so much material. We really know
a lot about the interaction between the two of them,
kind of like the vibe between the two of them.
There's a lot of strength on both sides, but they

(18:26):
really have this kind of mutual appreciation and both are
very much kind of charmed one by the other. And
one of the things that I liked most is that
this idea of the voice as being linked to sexuality
is something that we see again and again and again.
She's not someone who's ever self spoken, and she is
someone who pursues sexual pleasure throughout the entire book, and
I think it's important to recognize it for like the

(18:47):
deeply feminist thing that it is, because we have this
very young girl who is standing up to like literally
one of the most blatant embodiments of the patriarchy. One
quick note on the patriarchy. I don't think I needed
more information about why it was that Katalina was attracted
to andre Cha Sencio. But this time reading through I

(19:10):
did find this whole kind of vein that also helped
me understand why she was attracted to him. And this
is the idea that Catalina is like very close with
her dad. She's like very much a daddy's girl. And
I have to say, I mean, my sister and I
talk about this all the time. We are not daddy's girls.
Like our dad never was protective of us, always assumed
that we would make good decisions, treated us like very independent,

(19:30):
strong people.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
My dad's also like not a romantic dude.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
So I was just I was like having a little
bit of a hard time really digging into all of
the kind of romantic overtones of young Katalina with her dad.
They're very like affectionate with each other, which I mean,
there's obviously nothing wrong with this, but I just was
a little like, huh, this is really standing out to me.
At the bottom of page seventy six, we have this
and this is Katalina speaking. Obviously, she is our first person.

(19:56):
Narratorsos Matiezo, Mano bach Raitas and Las Parda as amansando I.
So you know, he's he's like he's giving her lots
of kisses. He's putting his hand up under her blouse.
Turns out that he's like, you know, like tickling her back.

(20:16):
But when I first read that he was putting his
hand up her blouse, I was like, oh my gosh,
what's happening here? And then the father says Asa Novia, like,
do you want to you you look beautiful like that?
Do you want to be my girlfriend? Claro Lenaosa, so like, yeah,
I want to be like your mistress or your girlfriend,
but not your wife.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
So I was like a little taken aback by that.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Obviously, this is playful, and she does have like a
very sweet relationship with her father and he is a
source of support. You also get a sense right from
the beginning that you know she comes from a family
that was not well off, and her father there are
lots of kids in the family.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Her father is.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
Both I think a little reticent to let Catalina go
and be with Andresa Sensio, but also fully understands that
this is an opportunity and economic opportunity for the family
that they really should.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Not pass up.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
I am realizing that some people might just be like
that is crazy. A fifteen year old should not ever
be with a thirty five year old or that, like,
I don't think anyone has the illusion that a fifteen
year old couldn't be in love with a thirty five
year old. And there are definitely some problematic aspects to
the whole thing, but in many ways they don't enter
into the book, and it doesn't feel as predatory as
it probably should, partially because we get the sense that

(21:27):
Andres has respect and is very charmed by her, but
also that she has a lot of strength and independence,
and that she is making a decision that really is
coming from a place of romantic attraction. So it's important
to note that we are beginning the relationship from a
place of real kind of mutual attraction, mutual charm. And
one of the things that I really appreciated about the

(21:49):
book this time is that it does give us a
decade's long vision of a marriage, and not just any marriage,
but a marriage that is under a lot of stress
because of the governmental ambition of Andre sa Sencio. Also
because he is a criminal and causes all sorts of violence.
He's also a total womanizer in general, just like a

(22:09):
very bad dude. But I found it so interesting when
we did have these moments of real longing on the
part of Katalina, and I think Mastreta does this kind
of masterful job of really expressing the fact that it
is very difficult. Katalina really does have a lot of
love for this man, but also understands that he is
a very complicated and really like not great person. And

(22:33):
part of what is interesting is her ambivalence about him
also stems from the fact that he is someone who
is very much out in the world. He has a
lot of agency. Obviously, he's like an important political figure.
He is based on an actual figure named Camacho. I
don't actually know that much about that. He was I
think more involved in Boil than in the Capitol, although

(22:53):
I'm not totally.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
Sure about that.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
But she's really chafing under sort of the domestic demands
that are being made on her, and also she's kind
of bored and lonely. But the way that that manifests
itself often is a kind of longing for him. So
she talks on page one forty three about fear that
she would have when she would wake up without him
by her side, and about how if he was gone
for periods of time, she missed him, so you have

(23:17):
a very explicit sense of of what that ambivalence feels like.
On page one sixty three, she says simpre.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
And rest migo.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
So there is so she's saying that, like the that
she always felt like the only the only thing she
needed to feel safe was to have him by her side.
You can read this obviously in the sense that like
she would be concerned about violence and like reprisals on
the part of his enemies, but it is much deeper
than that. I don't think she feels particularly unsafe in
terms of her physical safety. You do not get that

(23:52):
sense through the book, at least not most of the time.
But you do get the sense that that she that
they really do even when when times are tough for
the two of them. They have different ways, whether it's
sexual relations or whether it's riding horses. They do a
lot of horseback riding. There are ways that they still
really enjoy each other's company. So I just want to
touch briefly on the way that some of this violence

(24:14):
is treated.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
In the book.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
Almost all of it is happening sort of off in
the wings. These are not things that we are seeing
directly very often, and that is part of the reason
why the reader, you know, sort of forgives Catalina for
this kind of willed ignorance that she has. There are
a couple of different times when people confront her by saying, like, literally,
your husband killed my husband, and it's really telling because

(24:36):
often her reaction is like, he would never have done
that himself. There's a lot of sense of like, maybe
he had someone kill your husband, which really speaks to
the level of corruption and violence in Mexico in this period.
I listen to a fascinating interview two women. It's a
podcast called La mis Ma Bachina. Really interesting conversation between

(24:57):
two Mexican women about what.

Speaker 2 (24:59):
They kept calling loopholes.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
There was a certain acceptance of a level of crime,
certainly in the time immediately after the revolution, but still
that there is a certain amount of violence and corruption
and killing that is simply accepted.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
This is something that I don't have.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
A lot of information about, but it certainly is something
that is depicted well in the book. And one of
the things that happens is as the novel moves along,
this kind of willed ignorance that she has is eroded
by the fact that there.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
Is too much evidence.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
Evidence is beginning to pile up, and one of the
things that I liked best is that when she really
can't bury her head in the sand anymore, what she
tries to do is in fact make things right for
the families of these victims. So whether that is employing
them or providing them with a means for making a
living on their own, we have the sense of her

(25:51):
as becoming a little bit more aware of what is
actually happening and taking some sort of responsibility. And there
was one aspect that I want to touch on. I'm
going to try to do this without spoiling anything. I
was fascinated by the idea that Andres is very accepting
of the notion, the idea of her having a lover
that he really doesn't have a lot of opposition to that.

(26:12):
He himself is, you know, is someone who has many
many lovers. He has many different children with many different women.
He has many different women, He's supplied them with different houses.
It's a very open secret that he has all of
these different women in these different places. What I found
interesting is that there are a lot of like actually
very light and somewhat humorous interactions between Katalina and andres

(26:36):
that have to do with this idea of her having
a lover. The problem arises when she is involved with
someone whose politics don't match his politics.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
So for me personally, one of the interesting things.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
That kept happening is I would have these ideas about
what was acceptable what is not, whether that is marital
infidelity or whether that is having someone shot.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
You really are.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
Getting to know people whose perspectives on those are very different,
and you're getting to like those characters and you're getting
to understand their relationship. You certainly are not coming away
thinking that it's a good idea to have people killed.
But this idea of ambivalence, this idea of having to
sort of hold different things, opposing ideas at the same time,
is something that we see in many different aspects throughout

(27:19):
the work. Okay, I'm on a close today, not by
looking at the end because I don't want to spoil anything,
but by talking about some of the literary merit of
the book. So a couple of different things that work
so well.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
One is this tone.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
So often, this lightness of tone is most effective in
these really kind of tense and sort of dark moments
because it acts as a kind of comic relief, so
we have throughout. You could even hear it in the
initial interaction between Catarina and Andres that there's this kind
of charming, kind of teasing thing going on a lot
of the time. But we maintain that even when the

(27:53):
text gets much darker, and it's important to point out
that this lightness of tone is somewhat.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Pervasive, but there's also a lot of depth.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
There are a lot of very like difficult things that
are happening, a lot of violent and kind of terrible
things are happening in the book. For example, at one point,
Katalina is with one of her friends and essentially says
because she's starting to feel unsafe, and essentially they're like
a spa together, which they're always in these kind of
like very female or very domestic settings. In this case,

(28:21):
they're at a spa and Katalina very you know, sort
of vulnerably says to her friend, I don't want to die,
and the friend says something like, yeah, certainly not now
that you're looking so good. That is a terrible translation,
but we have that kind of moment when.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
Not always, because often.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
Mastereta does a very good job of letting the sort
of darkness be but there are many times when things
are getting very dark and we do have that kind
of levity, and it's always very smart like that and
somewhat unexpected. And I think it's notable that this tone
is very difficult to pull off. This kind of lightness
together with this kind of gravitas, is really well done.

(29:02):
Another one of these literary tropes that she uses throughout
the novel and really excellent ways, is the idea of foreshadowing.
So there is a lot in this novel where characters
are saying stuff in very clear terms in a way
that should feel heavy handed, and oftentimes it's in this
kind of lighter tone that they'll say things like, literally,
when Catarina says I don't want to.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
Die, there are a couple of characters who do die.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
I'm not going to tell you which, but throughout we
have them at different points talking about their death, or
we have the narrator describing different things that have to
do with graves or tombs, and it should feel heavy handed,
but it doesn't. The thing that it does very nicely,
in fact, is kind of build up this tension. You
have the sense that these people are in a very

(29:48):
certain of them are in a very dangerous, very precarious situation.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
And a lot of it comes from this excellent use
of foreshadowing. Another thing that she.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
Does so well is foils. So a foil in literature,
when they are well done, they can be so illustrative.
So I say that illustrative.

Speaker 2 (30:05):
They can illustrate a lot.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
So a foil is basically someone who has a lot
of the same characteristics as our protagonist, but who has
a very different sort of outcome or a very different
manner of being in the world. So in the case
of Katalina, you could have any one of her friends,
any one of the wives of these different government officials,
and there are lots of them, and they're very, very

(30:29):
different than she is. One of the things this does
is allow us to see how different Katarina is from
a lot of them, which is very helpful in terms
of our appreciation of her and also in terms of
our sense of intimacy.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
This idea that we really know the world well because
we have a good sense of who she is.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
But whenever we have these kind of real disparities between
her attitude about her husband and another woman's, or her
attitude about her children and another woman's it's really very telling.
Another element that is so well done is this idea
that when you are reading a book, if you come
across a house, or if you come across a garden,
you should take a step back and see whether or

(31:07):
not that.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
Is being used symbolically.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
So, if a writer is worth her salt, she will
take something like a house or a garden, and the
state of that house or the state of that garden
will say a lot about the group of people who.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Are living there.

Speaker 1 (31:20):
So in the course of the novel, Katalina has many
different homes with andres and the way that those spaces
change says so much about where she is in her
relationship and how she's feeling about things. Often they are
a real mix of public and private. These are places
where she's having to entertain. There's one house that has
like fifteen bedrooms, and all of these are places where

(31:42):
she should feel very settled and yet doesn't. Especially later
in the novel, houses become more and more important. At
one point she has a small house that is her
own space, and it really speaks to this idea of
her as having some independence and a sense of her
own self apart from her husband. Also at the end
of the novel, there's a whole thing that happens with
lots of different houses that also speaks to the primacy

(32:05):
of Katalina in terms of her relationship with Andres. It's
really interesting too, to think about maternity in the novel.
She has her own two children that she has with Andres,
and it's very interesting because she is someone who really
makes personal pleasure a priority.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
But she really does not like being pregnant.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
I don't know why I put those two an in
juxtaposition like that, but she is not happy being pregnant,
and that part of the novel and her sort of
attitude about children is really fascinating. Yet again we have
Katalina really doing her own thing. She does have very
close relationships with her children. She also ends up having
close relationships with many of the other children that Andres

(32:44):
has had with other women, which really speaks to her
expansiveness and sort of her generosity. But I really liked
the idea that there was sort of an unexpected attitude
toward maternity that gave the whole thing a little more texture.
There was also one point in novel which I found
really telling, where she really felt like she needed to
separate on this from her children, which made a huge

(33:06):
amount of sense to me. There are a number of
different points, of course, where she is acknowledging the fact
that he is a dangerous person and that what is
happening around them is very wrong. So this is actually
a perfect place to end. I loved the depiction of
one of her adopted daughters. She's not like officially adopted,
but one of Andres's daughters with another woman she ends

(33:26):
up having. Katalina ends up having a very close relationship
with this young woman, and in many ways, this kind
of step daughter feels very much like a foil because
in many ways she's very similar to Katalina, and in
some ways she's very different. And obviously, when you have
a new generation at the end of a novel, we.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Are really speaking about the future.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
We're speaking about the ways that what has happened in
the novel within the family is going to manifest itself
moving forward.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
And I loved the.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Way that Mastreta depicted this young woman because we see
a lot of the same strength that we see in Katalina,
and we see some of the complexity certainly, but in
many ways it ended up feeling like a very optimistic
book because we see some of the very best characteristics
of Katalina that are sort of amplified in.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
This young woman.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
In some ways, I feel like today we've only scratched
the surface of this book that I really, really love.
But I hope that today has given you a slightly
deeper appreciation of all the ways that Angeles Mastreta has
written this book that is both profound and eye opening
and disturbing, and yet also incredibly light.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
And inspiring in lots of ways. So thank you so
much for tuning in. Happy reading,