The Party's Over

In four sharp, clear episodes, linked by theme and intent, Juan Goytisolo portrays modern Spain after thirty wearying years of dictatorship. On the surface, these are love stories—the author in fact subtitles his work "Four attempts to define a love story." Each deals with upper middle-class marriages gone stale, their days filled with endless rounds of aimless parties, excessive drinking, and infidelity: the men are exhausted, the women passive, their lives together flat and unsatisfying.

 

On a deeper level, Goytisolo is subtly presenting the social and political face of Spain, of which these people constitute an elite. It is a picture of a nation

"half-dead at the top." Yet the hopelessness and sterility of these wealthy, indolent people are set against a peasantry virtually as corrupt and impotent: we see that the society is half-dead at the bottom, as well. In the tersest of prose, Goytisolo describes a Spain at once feverish and somnambulistic, its people the victims of the society which they themselves create.