Juanita Narboni speaks across more than three hundred pages in the first person, moving through a stream of ideas, events, comments, and emotions that often read like a monologue. It feels like everyday speech where the hero’s voice carries the whole narrative, weaving together thoughts in a rhythm that rarely settles into a traditional plot.
At several memorable discussions held at the University of Malaga about Spanish literature, the novel Alberto La vida perra by Juanita Narboni (Seix Barral, 2021) received high praise. One reader remarked that it was the finest novel they had ever encountered, a moment of awakening that underscored the importance of diving in to understand this bold work. The reader then picked up the latest edition and found that initial spark confirmed in their own reading.
What emerges through succinct sentences that favor simple structures and coordination is a narrative that unfolds as if Juanita’s mind itself is pacing the text. The result is a cadence that asks the reader to pause and time the reading with a sense of breath. Colloquial language plays a vital role, shaping character through a distinctive vocabulary that signals a particular social heritage. French expressions underscore status and social ancestry, while humor appears in playful phrases and cultural references. The text also laces in everyday vulgarities and sharp, raw expressions to give the voice authenticity, and it includes nonstandard Spanish words such as memloca, surraca, jalufo, puñemas, and table.
The work appeared in 1976 during a moment of renewal and repositioning for the Spanish novel. The author, Ángel Vázquez, did not conform to the traditional literary canons, neither commercially nor academically, despite having won the Planeta Prize in 1962. This book presents a protagonist living in Tangier in the early 1940s, a life shaped by circumstances that resist easy categorization.
The story is divided into two parts, consisting of twenty-one and twenty-six sequences, without a straightforward chronological parting line. Juanita is deeply unhappy from the start, confined at home, guided by old morals yet drawn to cinema and intimate encounters, and resistant to the society in which she finds herself. She speaks with tenderness toward her mother, while feeling estranged from her father and sister, and she reveals a persistent thread of disappointment. Yet amid this selfhood, she offers social insight, sometimes suggesting that radical ideas deserve consideration and that hardship remains a constant presence in life. The tale is also set in Tangier, where the narrator notes the city’s stark, unsettling realities.
The character is framed by two negative pillars: a sense that everything works against her and a stubborn streak of bad luck that shadows her days. The narrator’s perspective repeatedly echoes the tension between personal fate and a world that seems stacked against her. This figure, as the novel often suggests, is highlighted through the parallel between Tangier’s environment and the trajectory of her own life.
Why pick up this novel? It stands as an example of high literature where art grows directly from life and is crafted with a fearless linguistic and literary exercise. It presents a voice that deserves to be recognized among the greats of Spanish letters. It also captures a moment in seventies fiction where friendship and ambition intersect in ways that continue to resonate with readers today.