The Return
The Return
Victoria Hislop’s first novel, The Island, was a runaway success way back in 2005. A copy of her second one, The Return, has been sitting on my shelf for years; high time I read it and passed it on – she’s already published eight more!
It’s a marriage between a family saga and meticulous historical research of the period of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, set partly in England but mostly in Spain. The narrative spans two time frames: the early part of the 21st Century and the 1930s.
Sonia Cameron is half Spanish, married to a ‘dusty old husband’. She jumps at the chance to get away with her best friend, Maggie, and they travel to Granada for a holiday in the sun. Whilst there Sonia is irresistibly drawn to a dance class and a specific cafe, El Barril, which has strangely familiar items differentiating it. She becomes a frequent diner there, and the elderly proprietor of the cafe, Miguel, befriends her and, over time, tells her the story of what happened during those terrible years under Franco‘s dictatorship, about which she is woefully ignorant. The history comes alive through his passionate narrative of the lives of the family who owned the cafe he now runs, and is made the more vibrant by some old photographs and letters he’s saved.
The Ramírez family consist of parents – Concha and Pablo, and their three sons – Antonio, Ignatio and Emilio; and one daughter – Mercedes. One son is a teacher; one a bullfighter; the third a guitarist and a homosexual (a significant fact at that time). Natural sibling rivalry turns into much more sinister divisions as the boys adopt rival allegiances in the war, with disastrous consequences. For her part, Mercedes is a flamenco dancer who, whilst still a teenager, falls deeply in love with a gypsy musician, Javier.
Franco’s regime is brutal. Air raids, bombardment, invasion. Executions, torture, deprivations. Imprisonment in stark conditions, unspeakable atrocities and devastation.The military coup which was meant to be swift and decisive, turns into three years of civil war costing the lives of half a million people. An equal number go into exile.
During those three years, thousands upon thousands of refugees from the various cities trek huge distances seeking shelter, finding instead further horror upon horror. Even those who eventually reach safety in England carry the burden of sights and sounds and pain beyond imagining. 
Mercedes Ramírez is one such escapee who never forgets, but who continues to lose herself in dancing the flamenco after reaching these shores, expressing her countrymen’s pain and sadness as nothing else could. She goes on to reach the top level of competitive dance, and it’s the records of this success that so capture the attention of Sonia years later, being herself a naturally talented dancer. And Miguel, who knew Mercedes personally, is the one person who can answer the deep longing and burning questions that have haunted her.
At just under 600 pages, it’s not a book for the faint-hearted – I got a whole cardigan knitted while I read it! I found the account of this war between compatriots and brothers both heart-rending and compelling reading, softened and made more palatable by the delicacy of the central romance and the devotion of some of the main characters, saving it from being too depressing. At times though it became horribly reminiscent of the terrible wastage and heartbreak of the wars ravaging our world right now. So many lessons to be learned.