Are family wounds inherited?

Marcos Giralt Torrente (Madrid, 1968) returns to the family –“territory of memory (…) where love and conflict converge”–, a constant in his production that has crystallized in novels ( Los seres felices ), volumes of stories ( Mudar de piel ) or testimonial and autobiographical works such as the very successful Tiempo de vida , dedicated to his father, or the more recent Algún día seré recuerdo .

In The Illusionists, the writer composes a kind of puzzle that the reader puts together. This is a book made up of interrelated episodes, brewing over the years—as the author gradually reveals—which also constitutes an investigation into the genealogy of his maternal side of the family. There is a desire—he writes in the final pages—to pay tribute to the mother. This follows the practice of authors such as Richard Ford or, more recently, Jorge Fernández Díaz, with books dedicated separately to his father and mother.

/ The book traces those episodes that secretly condition subsequent generations

Those who have followed the Madrid-born writer's writing will find some episodes in this volume resonant. His maternal grandfather, the writer Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, casts a long shadow over the family lineage ("the centrality of my grandfather in the family constellation"). Married to Josefina Malvido, they had four children, one of them Giralt's mother. After being widowed, the author of The Saga/Fugue of JB remarried and expanded his lineage to seven more children. The disagreements between the two would continue over the years and persist after the patriarch's death due to his will.

The Illusionists begins with a portrait that could easily be converted into a thesis or an essay on the relationship between his grandparents. The correspondence they exchanged—for copyright reasons, the grandfather's letters are not reproduced verbatim—paints a series of scenarios, a family history, and an intimate relationship between the couple where Torrente Ballester—"Puritan and carnal, Catholic and progressive, selfish and controlling, reserved and petulant"—does not arouse sympathy. The writer grandson ("I too adored my grandfather as soon as I knew how") will balance between objectivity and subjectivity in his approach to the subject.

This text traces the imprint of a primal wound, which for the grandson marks the lives of his mother and his aunts and uncles: the premature death of his grandmother and the early passing of her husband. The author chooses to identify his relatives with their initials. He does this—he writes—to avoid excessive attachment or disaffection with the characters, but their given names would bring them closer to the reader.

/His uncle Gonzalo, an award-winning writer and criminal, “my most beloved role model,” let his talent slip away.

The author profiles his two uncles, his aunt, and his mother. He elevates each of their lives, each with its own—often unflattering—characteristics and transforms them into beings as real as they are literary. This is the case with his uncle Gonzalo, an award-winning writer and delinquent, "my most beloved role model," who lost his talent. He revives the perspective of his childhood and youth and shared experiences, which now corroborate intuitions from that time or to which he gives new meaning.

The book traces those episodes that secretly influence later generations ("an event that occurred before we came into the world can have a greater impact on who we are") and questions whether there are inheritances that are carried within; whether mystifications, the seed of writing, economic instability, or the way we approach life are quietly determined, or whether each person is the master of their own decisions. He, too, is a descendant of that saga. Giralt Torrente thus completes a literary exercise in self-knowledge, with psychoanalytic pages—the portrait of his mother—and existential questions: loneliness, a constant. He does so with his characteristic tone, phrasing, and elegant writing, which brings such a joyful moment to his readers.