Bookish Déjà-Vu: In Diamond Square by Mercè Rodoreda

Even in our modern times it can be quite a challenge for a woman to stand her own in a society that can’t deny its patriarchal and sexist heritage, moreover one that men still live either because they belong to those few who cling stubbornly to anachronistic views or because in their regions of the world it’s common practice. In a past, when in the Western world, too, to be born a woman almost inevitably meant to be doomed to a life of submission and suffering, only few had the chance and the courage to claim power over their own destiny. In Barcelona of the 1930s, the protagonist of In Diamond Square by Mercè Rodoreda, another bookish déjà-vu, vegetates beside her all-controlling husband until the need to feed her family and the adversities of the Civil War wake her up and force her to take life into her own hands…
Read my review »