A son confronts the woman who brought him into the world

Starting with the Letter to the father, of Franz Kafka, the list of novels that have explored the relationship between parents and children is long and extensive. Within this broad subject, there are quite a few novels in which children demand explanations from their parents. The most numerous are surely those about sons versus fathers, followed by those about daughters versus mothers or fathers, and perhaps the fewest are those about sons confronting their mothers. Boys or men who, having reached a certain point in life, look back and want to settle accounts with the woman who brought them into the world. Well, Marc Cerdó has written one of them, and a very particular one at that: a novel in two voices, her own and that of her absent mother, who stir and love each other, ignore and spy on each other, and read and almost write to each other. The book is a magnificent example of how to write a novel that doesn't follow any manual: it doesn't make all the pieces fit together, it has no climax, it doesn't present characters through stellar irruptions in scenes expressly constructed to present them... It moves in unmapped territory and advances by placing one piece after another until completing a piece breaks the most conventional social norms. In addition, it contains a series of profound, almost aphoristic reflections on life and death and mother-child love, which represent the most successful, and melancholic, moments of the reading.

The mechanism works wonderfully. Through a dialogue with the materials the son finds in the nursery where his now-dead mother kept all her papers, from letters to police reports, a double portrait is drawn: that of a woman outside of all conventions in 1970s Mallorca, and that of a son who, many years later, demands explanations from her. Who is his father? Why did he spend more years with his aunts and grandmothers than with her? Who were all those peculiar friends who frequented the house? Why didn't he have a life like other children? In short, my mother had a project for him. She wanted to turn him into a writer, and she certainly succeeded.

Now, being a writer when you are the son of another writer can't be easy, and being the son of a woman with the strength and character that Xesca Ensenyat (1953-2009) must have had, even less so. She had been an activist for the language, one of the first bloggers in Catalan, had received several literary awards and had been considered among the writers of the literary generation of the seventies, such as Carme Riera or Maria Antònia Oliver. And Marc Cerdó – for better or worse, because this is perhaps his only weak point as a writer – is still struggling to free himself from the web woven by Xesca Ensenyat when she became a mother and realized that she had to be responsible for a life other than her own. There are many layers of interpretation here, because, at the time we're talking about, being a creative woman and getting angry because motherhood puts a stop to your artistic streak was neither common nor well-regarded.

The year Marc Cerdó was born, in 1974, one of John Cassavetes' most wonderful films was released, A confused woman, with a Peter Falk desperate to love a Gena Rowlands who is increasingly beyond reason. It's just a coincidence, of course, but good readers know that, in the hands of a good writer who knows how to put narrative together, coincidences can become something else. Cerdó has had the skill and wisdom, as well as the cunning, to articulate a story that, like a puzzle with missing pieces and information that is never given, is the most faithful possible portrait of one of the most generous acts one can perform: loving someone who doesn't know how to love.