Customer Reviews

The Spendthrifts

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Benito Pérez Galdós is the Spanish Balzac, author of 76 novels, more than a dozen plays, and hundreds of newspaper articles. Like Balzac's Comedie Humaine for France, his novelistic world encompasses most of nineteenth-century Spain and is peopled with recurring characters who live on in the reader's mind long after the book is closed. The interpenetration of the personal and political of their time makes his books exemplary realist novels, as brilliant as the works of Zola, Balzac and Dickens.

The Spendthrifts is most enjoyable after reading Torment (by the same author), in which the main characters are introduced. But it can stand alone and be enjoyed on its own merits. This story of a snobbish, mean-spirited petite-bourgeoise, married to an incredible cheapskate 15 years older than she, is a many-layered and sophisticated novel that rewards anew each time it is re-read.

Galdós is considered the greatest Spanish novelist after Cervantes for good reason. It's a pity his work is not better known in the English-speaking world.