El currículum de Aurora Ortíz

by Almudena Solana

This is the story of Aurora Ortiz, who lives in Madrid, and who, at the age of only 30, has been widowed and needs to find a job. Although she is in no position to choose, she would ideally like to work as a caretaker in a quiet block of flats where she could just watch life pass by. Aurora's aspirations are simple and few, and with the help of her neighbor and friend Fany, she composes what she considers a suitable curriculum vitae and proceeds to tramp the streets of the city in search of work. With her vitality and freshness, her innocence, her unconventional intelligence, and her relative lack of commercial ambition, Aurora Ortiz is a new type of heroine, one whose ethos and view of the world run contrary to most contemporary trends. The means by which she comes to terms with the burden and pressures of modern life will strike chords with many of her own European generation.

237 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2002

About the author

Almudena Solana is Spanish novelist who now lives in Madrid, Spain. She has a degree in journalism and is also a painter as well as a writer. Her first novel The Curriculum of Aurora Ortiz (2002) has been translated into several languages. This was followed by two more novels, English Women Shatter Their Heels by Balking (2007) and The importance of fluorescent fish (Suma, 2009).

Reviews

[Declan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a slight book but one which I enjoyed because the very quiet and unassuming central character, Aurora Ortiz, became, for me, quite an endearing person once the circumspect narrative of the book allowed a few details about her, and her life prior to our meeting her at the age of 30 - already a widow, her husband having died suddenly three years previously - to seep through. The CV of the title is far from the usual tedious list of work experience etc. but is instead a series of letters revealing - midst many diversions about her life - her ambition to be a caretaker in a quiet block of flats. She has had a basic education, in a small village to which she returns at one point in the novel and meets there a young priest whose unconventional ways include loaning Bach CDs to his parishioners so that they can talk the effect and intent of the music in a small discussion group he sets up. He, Clement and she, Aurora recognise a common questioning spirit in each other. They take long walks together. People talk. Nothing happens! So much the better for this nicely observed novel.

Among my favorite quotes from Aurora, a very keen reader, are these:

Why are people so afraid of thinking? Why don't they ever leave enough time to reflect? There's nothing wrong with tranquility; nor emptiness, vertigo, or even unhappiness. I think that these things are the first steps that precede the birth of a new thought.

Sometimes I'm happy even though I'm sad, and sometimes I'm sad even though I'm laughing out loud and telling jokes with a beer in my hand. Happiness depends on the effort you put into being happy rather than something else.

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love to read small books, little known books, that others have enjoyed. This is one of these.

Aurora Ortiz is the kind of person who you'd love to have as a friend; she's honest and open and truthful about herself. Unfortunately, this leads her into trouble when she is honest and open and truthful about herself when she applies to work for a job agency. Aurora is hurt by the agency's apparent dismissal of her and she travels off to recoup with her family. While there, she makes a new friend and learns the agency has an employee who is taken with her honesty. Aurora returns home and life seems good again.

I liked this short and simple story of a woman and her little struggles to pull herself together after her husband's death.

[okyrhoe · Rating 1 out of 5]

The novel is simply a character sketch of a charmingly quirky young woman who hasn't quite figured out who she is -- despite the fact that she insists she's interested in only one thing, filling the position of a caretaker in a building.

The portrait of Aurora, however, isn't a very detailed one, and narratively speaking, there are no major encounters (conflicts or otherwise) with the participating characters in the novel. Here and there Aurora will make an interesting observation, but overall there isn't much depth to the story.

The book reminds me somewhat of Amelie Nothomb's writing; in the latter's short novels there is an undercurrent of irony that isn't as evident in Solana's work.

[Noel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Given the fact that I was old enough (only by a hair) to be Aurora's mother, I felt like slapping her back into the real world, to shake her into relishing life and not throwing her talents away. I did get a bit exasperated with her as I felt she was a bit whiny and needed someone to plant both her feet firmly on the ground. I also enjoyed the second part of the book better than the first, I felt that the writing picked up and the storyline moved forward.