‘Vera, a love story’, by Juan del Val, winner of the Planeta award: a terrifying insipidity | Babelia

The bombastic melodramatic self-portrait that opens the book – “I am what I write. I must write everything that I am” – foreshadows a literary problem of the three pairs of noses because if this man is the one who wrote in this novel, perhaps it is better that he never abandons the popular television talk shows: the insipidity of his prose is terrifying.

Is it absolutely mandatory that so many Planets awards are such flat, predictable and very vulgar drivel? Reading some of those novels – Sonsoles Ónega, Juan del Val – hurts the liver from the lack of consideration and even from a kind of cynicism in the writing, from a deliberate inattention to winning over a few dozen more buyers, I suppose (and to the happiness of a jury dedicated to the cause): “Vera perceives that this man is a kind of force that pushes her to put her hand near the fire” and, as we will soon see, to more things than fire. Besides being soporific, the entire program of prefabricated plots and sentimental banalities is miserable to the point of boredom that mortifies the good, rich and methodical Vera in her insipid life. Her love for the Marquis ended, as love ends according to the novelist, from one moment to the next, even if at least her sister Alba, raised by her like the daughter she didn’t have (the soap opera also loves Juan del Val a lot) is “sexy without trying, that’s how you’re really sexy”.

In this novel a woman may not be pretty at first sight, “but her attractiveness increases the more you look at her”, and this is certainly fortunate. As for the boy in the novel, the reformed villain of the title of this note, Antonio, suffice it to say that he doesn’t know how or why but “he was good with women”, and it’s also lucky, of course, in addition to “being the real driving force of his existence”, and not that boring job of showing apartments to rich women, which is what he does to get out of poverty. And yes, since she was very sensual, while showing him an apartment with a dream view of Seville, Vera gets lost and the flame of love jumps in the form of a kiss, a question that Juan del Val poses in the style of a Kantian philosopher: “The kisses that you want to end end up hurting a little.” Then raise the quality of thought: “A life without kisses is hard.” For his part, the abandoned Marquis is “one of those men who transmit strength”, and perhaps this is why at the first opportunity he blurts out to his ex-wife on the phone that “if I see you with someone else, I’ll end everything”. The prophesied truculence arrives towards the end, when the telenovela is already happily trotting along untied because it turns out that Alba’s sister, Alba, aix, fucks more and more freely than Vera but precisely, and by pure chance, with Antonio’s brother, a little more prone to proto-delinquency.

The limited depth of the characters, the absence of a minimum of credible characterization, the mechanical scaffolding of a plot of love and revenge, the crunchy banality of the reflections, the evangelical poverty of the prose, the filling pages to tell alleged biographies of the characters promise a great success, I don’t know if among the readers who can say like Vera, after the kiss on the floor, that she is not that “type of woman. I don’t go around kissing the first person I meet”. down the street.” In reality, one can imagine, she is looking for herself, at least according to what the writer says: 45 years old and doesn’t even know how to masturbate, at least satisfactorily (even if she later learns by watching a “lively” video). The truculence of the telenovela also appears as a parade of the plot, with everything told and retold in a didactic way, and one senses from the leeeeeeeeee that the marquis will behave in a vindictive way by using some Bulgarian hitmen. The contrast between the festive revelry of the Seville fair and the dark omens of tragedy will be beautiful in the film.

Without his previous novel mouth era Mrs. Bovaryat least Gray’s shadow was lurking and a better armed, thuggish and sometimes even funny cynicism. This, nor that, although the best, by far, are the believable and natural sex scenes. Next year I would think of Megan Maxwell as a candidate for the award (she is Spanish, despite her Anglo-Saxon pseudonym), in particular the more “risque” Maxwell, as Juan del Val would say. The truly extravagant thing is that a sentimental newsstand novel like this goes on to win the prize that the vast majority of the population considers the most prestigious and relevant among the private ones. How anxious to know if the excellent quality of the novel will increase its sales to the enormous figures of Sonsoles Ónega.