Brittainy Lauback
Fuentes became fascinated with Spanish history while living in Salamanca.
Ernest Hemingway and Christopher Isherwood may have the Spanish Civil War covered, but few English-language novelists have looked at the fallout from the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Until now.
The Sleeping World (Touchstone), a stunning debut novel from Madison native Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes, takes us to Spain in the late 1970s, a place not often visited by contemporary North American readers or writers.
Landing a publishing contract with Simon and Schuster’s Touchstone imprint is a well-deserved score for Fuentes, who is a doctoral candidate in English literature and creative writing at the University of Georgia.
When the novel opens, it’s 1977 and Franco has been dead for a few years, but the transition to democracy is slow and halting. Spain seesaws between the old ways and the new. Young people are especially vulnerable. Most are disillusioned by what they see as a continuation of the status quo of violence and oppression, as the fascists battle the anarchists for power. And many are scarred by family histories of victimization by the old regime; people know how to behave when someone “disappears” and are familiar with the rituals the police use to intimidate those left behind.
Yet after years of isolation, the outside world is gaining a toehold. Music, art, clothing and ideas are slipping in. There are punks and street artists, underground newspapers and talk of revenge. Mosca, a university student, is trying to stay afloat amid all this confusion.
The secret police murdered Mosca’s parents when she and her brother Alexis were children. Raised by her grandmother, Mosca tries to keep her head down and avoid trouble. But when Alexis disappears after seeking the truth about their parents’ deaths, Mosca descends into a spiral of reckless behavior that leads to a road trip from hell.
Most of the novel takes place while Mosca and her friends journey through Spain and France, fueled by their nihilistic rage. We learn of the siblings’ past through Mosca’s memories. Convinced (despite strong evidence to the contrary) that Alexis may still be alive and on the run, Mosca searches the cities of Spain and France for evidence of his existence. Alexis was a graffiti artist who marked his locations with his tag, and Mosca examines buildings and alleys for his name wherever she goes. She becomes increasingly unhinged by her failure to find him and by the effects of exposure and semi-starvation that set in once the meager funds run out. Mirroring Mosca’s disintegrating connection with reality, the novel becomes more and more dreamlike, ending with a series of beautifully written passages arranged like poems on the page.
At its heart this novel is about a sister’s journey through grief. Why did Fuentes choose to set it in Spain in the 1970s? Fuentes, who lived for a time in Salamanca, says she became fascinated by Spanish history and by the country’s moments of crisis. “This landscape functioned for me not only as a literary space of grief but as a mirror of our own times,” says Fuentes. Her choice to set the novel in this time and place makes what could be a simple coming-of-age story into something new and compelling.
Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes will read from The Sleeping World at Barnes & Noble, 7433 Mineral Point Rd., on Sept. 12 at 7 p.m.
