Review of ‘The Biggest Girl I Know’, the new addition to Sara Barquinero

It does not assume a break with the spirit of the previous title, to which the new one seems to have a sufficient relationship. The shortest list… It’s all a campus novel, just like “Tarde para nada”, the best of stories Los Escorpiones. They are likewise used in both certain jobs modern recourses: photographic illustrations or equivalent apostilles to notes at the end of the page.

The shortest list… tells a unified history. Young “provincial” Alicia moves to Madrid to study philosophy at Complutense. The novel describes his occupation, semester by semester, during course periods, more than the natural holiday breaks. Alicia develops relationships with several students in her major with stable people problematic ties.

The combination of private and academic stimuli can bring out friendship, respect, reconciliation… It also develops intense sentimental and erotic activities, especially with a charismatic professor, Juan, a tortured guy who becomes a lover.

This line of argument refers to a dual literary model. On the one hand, a novel of learning in the reblandicide style of Salinger de The Guard enters its centennial year. It involves the development of the girl and her companions, the accumulation of new experiences and the adoption of an undecided identity.

On the other hand, we have a psychological investigation story that concerns us and Alicia’s confused mental reality and who examines the spiritual pains and sufferings of his fellow men. In this way, history has a collective dimension and is limited to university youth.

But we don’t only have an internal press of a specific youth sector. The psychological perspective was extended to another specific community, the community of professors. Reject the aforementioned Juan because of the detail with which one is painted retortive personality, but on that side appear the diseases of the soul which afflict their fellows, and the perversions of the mind which govern their conduct.

The dimension of the psychological portrait, on the other hand, is projected as an investigation of emotional life, which ends with the work being transformed into exploring love in its dual spiritual and physiological dimensions. Indeed, Barquinero presents an authentic study of the meaning of love, which emerges in a dialectical form based on theoretical arguments, among others Plato, Heidegger, Sartre or Barthes. Inextricably linked to this premise, she explores female friendship in comparison to the inertia of patriarchy and machismo.

Conventional maduración novel, not exempt from It is called ingenuidades descriptivasThus, the cobra has a remarkable density and is commonly found in it a fiercely wise and thoughtful relation of thoughts and judgments. Here, the work’s most personal nature is rooted in the confluence of witness realism and speculative empathy. The documentary story follows the extremes of pure habits. The university enclosure is described with topographical accuracy and the student streets of Moncloa are filled with minute details.

I wanted to celebrate Barquiner’s determination to risk delisting

All this focuses on rich accounts of academic life, authentic anecdotal history. It has disagreements between areas of knowledge, questions from professors, criteria for advancement, election interviews, strategies for achieving good things, and a detailed menu, all based on true and clear information. In addition, complaints filed against professor and activist Juan Carlos Monedero are withdrawn and the case is mentioned in the dispute involving Iñigo Errejón.

The other vertical, speculative, attached to the form. The structure of the novel imitates a philosophical treatise. The work is distributed in three rolled blocks Book I, II and III. Each shows a brief “Hypothesis” which is explained in a corresponding “Demonstration” to which are added other “Observations”. Each book is divided into numbered blocks with a paragraph mark (§). There is also a rich end bibliography with a hundred years of literary and philosophical references.

This analytical dimension of the novel is the situation of the story in context intellectual and thought relationship. The above questions are addressed here and are done in speculative terms. Therefore, it is no surprise that the narrative has been surprised by claims and questions as little telling as this one, to give just one example: “How can we know if it is not thought or desire that guides our intuitions and not reason? Kant vs. Kierkegaard”.

Barquinero thus builds a curious novel of ideas in which discussions and reflections on intellectual motives replace pure reality. A well-known novel about learning takes over perhaps the highest corner of theoretical thinking.

It is not easy to risk the overall balance of the novel. Some reasons weigh on the negative side. The author does not blame graphomaniawhich leads them to dwell on irrelevant details and repetition. They are inspired by academics and also greatly affected by the loss of youthful love. Y no deja de haber unnecessary pedantry. On the plus side, we can celebrate Barquinero’s determination to create personal work and risk writing outside contemporary literary and commercial registers.