The Wrong Blood
A Novel
by Manuel de Lope
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Buy on Amazon
Buy on BN.com
Buy on Bookshop.org
*This page contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app
1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date Sep 28 2010 | Archive Date Sep 01 2012
Description
In the Basque Country in northern Spain, just before the Civil War, three men in dinner suits stop for a drink at a bar before continuing on their way to a wedding. Their trip is interrupted when their leader, the wealthy Don Leopoldo, has a stroke in the restroom.This event, bizarre and undignified though it is, begins to weave together the lives of two remarkable women: the bride, the beautiful and distinguished Isabel Cruces, and María Antonia Etxarri, the bar owner’s adolescent daughter. Shortly after the outbreak of the war, María Antonia is raped and Isabel’s newlywed husband, Captain Julen Herraiz, is shot. Both women find themselves violently altered, alone, and pregnant. A crippled but wise local doctor is the only witness to the mysterious, silent agreement these women conclude in the loneliness and desperation of their mutual suffering. Many years later, a young student, grandson to Isabel, returns to the scene of the events to spend an innocent summer studying for law exams. As he goes about his work, he unwittingly awakens the ghosts haunting both María Antonia and the doctor, and through their memories the passionate stories of the past unfurl before the reader.
De Lope brilliantly reveals his incredible story through flashes of memory and emotion, told in a winding torrent that expresses the cumulative nature of both history and nostalgia.
De Lope brilliantly reveals his incredible story through flashes of memory and emotion, told in a winding torrent that expresses the cumulative nature of both history and nostalgia.
Advance Praise
"De Lope evokes his characters' interior lives and their outer surroundings with equal beauty and intensity. This masterful novel is his first to be translated into English. Let's hope there are more." -Booklist
"...the American debut of a celebrated Spanish novelist reads rapturously...the prose...pulsates and palpitates." -Kirkus Reviews
"Reading The Wrong Blood is like surrendering to a hypnotist. Manuel DeLope's subject is the fluidity of time and the pitilessness of war as played out in the lives of two women who quietly conspire to commit a victimless crime. The style is a marvel of precision and patience, resulting in an atmosphere so saturated with suspense that I found myself wanting to read more slowly, even as I breathlessly anticipated the next paragraph. I've seldom read a more sublime and disturbing novel." - Valerie Martin, author of The Confessions of Edward Day
"The Wrong Blood is a prose-poem to the furtive compromises that mitigate grief, and allow human survival at desperate times. Written with elegant ambiguity: I loved it." - Dave Boling, author of Guernica
"The Wrong Blood is a powerful novel suffused from beginning to end with a terrible, suppressed violence. Its chief virtue lies in showing us that war-every war-is like a distorting mirror: the soul never recovers from the monstrous vision reflected there." - Mayra Montero, author of The Messenger and Dancing to "Almendra"
"...the American debut of a celebrated Spanish novelist reads rapturously...the prose...pulsates and palpitates." -Kirkus Reviews
"Reading The Wrong Blood is like surrendering to a hypnotist. Manuel DeLope's subject is the fluidity of time and the pitilessness of war as played out in the lives of two women who quietly conspire to commit a victimless crime. The style is a marvel of precision and patience, resulting in an atmosphere so saturated with suspense that I found myself wanting to read more slowly, even as I breathlessly anticipated the next paragraph. I've seldom read a more sublime and disturbing novel." - Valerie Martin, author of The Confessions of Edward Day
"The Wrong Blood is a prose-poem to the furtive compromises that mitigate grief, and allow human survival at desperate times. Written with elegant ambiguity: I loved it." - Dave Boling, author of Guernica
"The Wrong Blood is a powerful novel suffused from beginning to end with a terrible, suppressed violence. Its chief virtue lies in showing us that war-every war-is like a distorting mirror: the soul never recovers from the monstrous vision reflected there." - Mayra Montero, author of The Messenger and Dancing to "Almendra"
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781590513095 |
| PRICE | $14.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 304 |
