Un carmen en Granada

These magnificent memories evoke a world and characters that seem to be taken from a James Joyce story. In its pages, Ian Gibson describes with unusual sincerity the life of a middle-class Irish family and does not hesitate to narrate both his early affective difficulties and the family demons that surrounded his closest environment for years: jealousy, countless disagreements between a embittered mother and a self-conscious father, distrust and a frustrating repression due to the Methodist religion. But in this risky personal and family portrait there is no shortage of luminous moments: the first friendships, some inspiring teachers, the initial erotic adventures or a pure love for nature and the world of birds. After adolescence, the young Gibson will discover in his first trips to Spain the literature of authors such as Federico García Lorca and Antonio Machado, as well as the drama of the Civil War and the postwar period. Having fulfilled the dream of spending a season in a Carmen, the typical Granada house with gardens, his investigations as a biographer of those and of figures such as Buñuel or Dalí brilliantly culminate this exciting memorial exercise, a milestone for someone specialized in recounting the lives of the others. The magnificent life story of one of the great biographers of Spanish culture.