{"id":410,"date":"2012-03-04T14:48:11","date_gmt":"2012-03-04T12:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=410"},"modified":"2012-03-04T14:48:11","modified_gmt":"2012-03-04T12:48:11","slug":"reading-out-of-envy-maria-duenass-el-tiempo-entre-costuras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2012\/03\/04\/reading-out-of-envy-maria-duenass-el-tiempo-entre-costuras\/","title":{"rendered":"READING OUT OF ENVY: MAR\u00cdA DUE\u00d1AS\u2019S EL TIEMPO ENTRE COSTURAS <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

They say that envy is the national Spanish sin (avarice would be the Catalan one). This week I\u2019ve used my evenings to read, out of envy, Mar\u00eda Due\u00f1as\u2019s best-selling novel El tiempo entre costuras<\/em> (2009). Why the envy? Well, Due\u00f1as is one of us: a teacher at the English Department of the Universidad de Murcia. [I haven\u2019t been able to understand, though, from the Department\u2019s website what she teaches and does research on. Most news reports refer to her as a teacher of \u2018Filolog\u00eda Inglesa.\u2019 Peculiar.] Yes, most teachers of (English) Literature are frustrated writers who end up acknowledging that it\u2019s always much better to teach good books than to write trashy ones, particularly for readers. There are many exceptions, of course. David Lodge used to be an outstanding academic and now he\u2019s a very successful novelist. One of my neighbours on the floor above \u2013Spanish Department\u2013 is the illustrious Carme Riera, professor, poet and novelist. She\u2019s the kind who writes excellent academic work and gets invited to attend conferences celebrated on her honour as a writer. One of its kind, really.<\/p>\n

I myself do not write fiction and hardly ever have, feeling always inclined to writing essays, even as a little girl. What kills me about Due\u00f1as\u2019s case, at any rate, are two overlapping matters: how she found the time to write 640 pages (this also applies to writing essays), and why isn\u2019t her quite average novel much better. El tiempo entre costuras<\/em> is an immense popular phenomenon that has made Due\u00f1as only second to Ken Follett in the Spanish middlebrow territory with this, her first novel. She\u2019s already sold more than one million copies, enough to consider, as a friend from the University of Murcia told me, retiring from teaching at 47 (that\u2019s slightly older than myself, and possibly the source of my deep envy!!). The TV series by Antena 3 with \u2013of course!\u2013 Adriana Ugarte (La Se\u00f1ora<\/em>) as the spy-cum-seamstress heroine will be soon released and, I\u2019m sure, will dramatically increase the sales of the book. Its appeal, to be frank, is quite easy to understand: this is a novel about a likeable, pretty heroine who moves from Madrid to Tetu\u00e1n and back to Madrid, between the Republic, the Civil War and its aftermath. Sira Quiroga undergoes quite a personal and professional transformation, which includes not just her work as a couturier but also as an improvised spy for the Brits during WWII. <\/p>\n

This is the kind of book that, because it\u2019s easy to read, seems easy to manufacture. Well, if it were there would be 1,000 Mar\u00eda Due\u00f1as, and that\u2019s not the case \u2013in which I find some comfort. Or not. A colleague who teaches creative writing informs me that a novel like this one \u2013clich\u00e9-ridden, with the seams showing particularly where historical information and characters are introduced and with an unlikely first person narrator\u2013 can be managed in two months (research apart). Maybe she\u2019s stretching the point but my own point is that I don\u2019t know any university teacher who has two solid months for writing a year, not even counting August. Unless you cut yourself off email and escape from all teaching duties in July, which used to be the case, not anymore. A friend and novelist, Carme Torras, explained to me that she puts aside one day a week for her writing, plus the holidays. I have no idea what method Due\u00f1as follows and no journalist has asked her.<\/p>\n

The other matter is the quality. A friend who specialises in detective fiction, Isabel Santaul\u00e0ria, tells me that given the window of opportunity (the two famous months) we might put thread to the needle and write a publishable novel. Publishable, perhaps, to be proud of I doubt it. Happy, lucky Due\u00f1as seems very proud indeed of her work and suitably baffled by its success, and I understand that very well \u2013how could I not? Yet, I would not have put my name on the cover of that novel or a similar one for I would not want others to think of me what I think of Due\u00f1as: that her novel will not do.<\/p>\n

This is envy for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They say that envy is the national Spanish sin (avarice would be the Catalan one). This week I\u2019ve used my evenings to read, out of envy, Mar\u00eda Due\u00f1as\u2019s best-selling novel El tiempo entre costuras (2009). Why the envy? Well, Due\u00f1as is one of us: a teacher at the English Department of the Universidad de Murcia. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}