Galego | English

Young Adults

A sombra descalza

By An Alfaya

About this book

Elsa, a sixteen-year old girl, is suffocating under the weight of family secrets. The tense silence finally breaks when she starts delving into the past and makes the women of the house, Amadora, Experanza, and Florinda -- silent for so long -- finally reveal the mysteries surrounding the men in their lives, Xulinao, Fernando, Bieito and Rafael. In exposing these dark areas of their lives, she attempts to regain the dignity lost during the Civil War. During that time, Sagrario was gone from their lives and yet ever-present. She still wanders the house like a barefoot shadow. An Alfaya was awarded the PREMIO LAZARILLO DE LITERATURA XUVENIL 2005 for this exciting and bitter novel about the need of women to revisit the past and in so doing regain their dignity.

Book fragment

It was no longer the time of hunger. Before, we had to smear bread with pork fat, butter or lard melted on the hearth. Then we had olive oil with sugar on our toast. Just heavenly! Granny Amadora used to say.

“Just heavenly, oh yes!” she used to mumble to herself while she stirred the contents of some pan.

Elsa had never tasted such delicacies. She felt a pang of disgust thinking of her teeth sinking into the crust of bread and the oil and crumbs dribbling from the corners of her mouth. However, Esperanza, her mother, used to remember it as a feast of her childhood days. No doubt hunger was a thing of the past… Now Elsa used to sweetening her mouth with chocolate, she changed her shoes often, not only when they became narrow or worn out round the tip or soles, or when the leather was damaged but just to match a new jacket, and that despite the fact that austerity was in high esteem in her house. Definitively, Elsa did not know that feeling of an empty stomach, the cold coming through thin, worn out clothing, or the feeling of barrenness when you find no images to feed your dreams.. Saying that she had never felt the hunger and cold was just stating the obvious. That is why she should not feel guilty…