Thesis on a domestication by Camila Sosa Villada

Year of publication: 2019

Valuation: Highly recommended

Thesis on a domestication It is a text that has been subjected to several revisions and rewritings, so much so that we read and review what would be the third version of a text initially published in Página 12 (if I’m not mistaken) and converted, years later, into a film script . And I don’t know if it is therefore a posteriori work or not, but the fact is that we are faced with a very good novel that stands out, in my opinion, for the magnificent work with characters that are shown in all their edges and contradictions.

All happy families are similar to each other, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

This is, more or less, the well-known phrase that begins Anna Karenina and it is a quote that would fit perfectly into Camila’s novel. Because whatever the Spanish edition’s title says (something like it’s a novel that turns the institution of marriage upside down), Thesis on a domestication It is a text that dissects the institution of the family and that also tells us about expectations, (self-)imposed roles, violence, ways of loving and desiring, loneliness, etc.

All this in a family made up of a transvestite actress who has to live with success as best she can, a homosexual husband from a well-to-do family, an adopted son and parents and a half-brother who give the novel an Almodovarian air, although in In the case of Argentina, the text has much greater crudeness and “corporeality.” In addition to the above, the novel combines the cultured and the popular, the “intellectual” references with a very cinematic structure and soap opera touches.

In terms of structure, the novel takes place in a short period of time, although various flashbacks are interspersed with which the author draws the map of family relationships that end up exploding in a second part of the novel that is as powerful as it is delicate.

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I won’t go any further and leave you the link to a short interview we had with the great Camila Sosa Villada, to whom we greatly appreciate her kindness. A luxury for us!