Book of the Week

Fortunata and Jacinta by Benito Perez Galdos
Recommended by Mr Hager

Set in late 19th Century Madrid, this 1887 novel follows the lives of two extraordinary women of different classes, both linked by their love for the same man, the spoiled and self-indulgent Juanito Santa Cruz.

Jacinta is Juanito’s husband (and cousin) and their seemingly idealistic marriage is soon complicated by Jacinta’s discovery that Juanito had a pre-marital dalliance with the impossibly beautiful Fortunata, before growing bored of her, leaving her pregnant and destitute.  The shadow of Fortunata looms over Jacinta as she becomes increasingly desperate for a child herself, prompting her to take drastic action that will see her becoming involved with the poorer echelons of Madrilenian society, thrusting her into Jacinta’s orbit.

The life of mercantile Madrid is wryly catalogued in this realist novel which is regarded as Galdos’ masterpiece, and which rivals War and Peace in length.  He is spoken of in the same breath as Dickens (whose Pickwick Papers he translated in 1868), Balzac and Tolstoy.  If you enjoy novels that range across the social spectrum and which consider the lives of an enormous and memorable cast of characters, then this is the book for you.