Hardly anything happens in this short novel of unrequited love, yet for many readers the heroine’s passion, combined with the classical restraint of the writing, make it an intensely memorable experience.


In forty beautiful and deeply moving letters, written one per day over the period of Lent, she recounts the story of her life — principally the loss of her mother and her childhood friendship with a young Spanish girl conducted in the shadow of Franco’s rule. Above all, the letters explore without compromise her extreme feelings of frustration, hatred and love for her aunt, their recipient.


The writing is infused throughout with a deeply spiritual sensibility and often specifically Catholic imagery, and it is to be regretted that no further books were to come from this accomplished and original writer, who committed suicide shortly before her book was first published.

‘Winter is over, and the homeless no longer shiver in the streets, but the small battalions of beggars are only a reflection of the starving hordes, and the fascist prisons of my youth now exist in half the countries of the world. So this is where I have been led by this long voyage of desire: to find refuge in a world which is as monstrous as that into which I was born. My rebellions have opened my heart; they have traced paths of fire in the desert of outdated morality, but they have not always taught me how to breathe when I am far from you.’ p130