War, So Much War was the last of Mercé Rodoreda's novels published in her lifetime, shortly before her death in 1983. Unlike the intense psychological realism of The Time of the Doves, this newly translated capstone to her writing career chronicles the picaresque adventures of a 15-year-old boy, Adrià Guinart. He hurtles with youthful energy from one encounter to another in a surreal landscape of perpetual war. Though no specific country or battle is ever named, he seems to be making his way through the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, which the author herself survived.
Rodoreda's literary technique is to keep actual combat offstage. She depicts men rushing into battle. She depicts glassy-eyed survivors emerging from battle. Throughout War's 43 episodes, some linked, some with recurring characters, Rodoreda compiles one testimony after another from the people Adrià encounters in his wanderings. Her descriptions are spare. Most characters are unnamed. The and-then-and-then plot races forward like a Bildungsroman on speed, as one character after another imparts to Adrià their advice for survival.
Rodoreda can be a compelling writer, dropping occasional jewels like "those who allow their souls to be populated by terror see things that do not exist." And her images are unforgettable. Her prose is frequently more poetry than narrative, more surreal visions than storytelling, but for all that it has the fascination of a trek across an infernal Hieronymus Bosch landscape, far-fetched enough to be artistic, realistic enough to be painfully true. --Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle, Wash.