What do you think?
Rate this book
After the Death of Don Juan
Don Juan, that notorious libertine, has disappeared. Has he been dragged down to hell by demons, as rumoured ― or has he escaped? Doña Ana, the woman he tried to seduce, will stop at nothing to discover the truth.Set in a rural eighteenth-century Spain rife with suspicion and cruelty, and featuring a glorious cast of peasants, aristocrats and vengeful ghosts, this moving, surprising tragicomedy is also Sylvia Townsend Warner's response to the dark days of the Spanish Civil War.
301 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1938
10 people are currently reading
1038 people want to read
About the author
Sylvia Townsend Warner
93 books440 followersSylvia Townsend Warner was born at Harrow on the Hill, the only child of George Townsend Warner and his wife Eleanora (Nora) Hudleston. Her father was a house-master at Harrow School and was, for many years, associated with the prestigious Harrow History Prize which was renamed the Townsend Warner History Prize in his honor, after his death in 1916. As a child, Sylvia seemingly enjoyed an idyllic childhood in rural Devonshire, but was strongly affected by her father's death.
She moved to London and worked in a munitions factory at the outbreak of World War I. She was friendly with a number of the "Bright Young Things" of the 1920s. Her first major success was the novel Lolly Willowes. In 1923 Warner met T. F. Powys whose writing influenced her own and whose work she in turn encouraged. It was at T.F. Powys' house in 1930 that Warner first met Valentine Ackland, a young poet. The two women fell in love and settled at Frome Vauchurch in Dorset. Alarmed by the growing threat of fascism, they were active in the Communist Party of Great Britain, and visited Spain on behalf of the Red Cross during the Civil War. They lived together from 1930 until Ackland's death in 1969. Warner's political engagement continued for the rest of her life, even after her disillusionment with communism. She died on 1 May 1978.
She moved to London and worked in a munitions factory at the outbreak of World War I. She was friendly with a number of the "Bright Young Things" of the 1920s. Her first major success was the novel Lolly Willowes. In 1923 Warner met T. F. Powys whose writing influenced her own and whose work she in turn encouraged. It was at T.F. Powys' house in 1930 that Warner first met Valentine Ackland, a young poet. The two women fell in love and settled at Frome Vauchurch in Dorset. Alarmed by the growing threat of fascism, they were active in the Communist Party of Great Britain, and visited Spain on behalf of the Red Cross during the Civil War. They lived together from 1930 until Ackland's death in 1969. Warner's political engagement continued for the rest of her life, even after her disillusionment with communism. She died on 1 May 1978.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
November 27, 2021
well objectively every individual sentence is striking and it has funny and poignant sections, i guess, but i am sorry to say (sylvia! babygirl!) i did not vibe with the whole.
i keep wondering if my reading experience would have different (better) if every single paratext did not mention the spanish civil war connection and context over and over, because i think it definitely pushes a single framework onto the novel and, imo, it does not work particularly well in that light. it's... ok i guess? it's ok.
i keep wondering if my reading experience would have different (better) if every single paratext did not mention the spanish civil war connection and context over and over, because i think it definitely pushes a single framework onto the novel and, imo, it does not work particularly well in that light. it's... ok i guess? it's ok.
April 17, 2025
A very readable, original historical fiction novel set in Spain in the 1870s. The womanizer, Don Juan has disappeared. His servant states that Don Juan has been taken by demons in punishment for killing Dona Ana’s father. Don Juan was having a brief affair with Dona Ana and was caught out by Dona’s father. Dona Ana, her husband Don Ottavio, and entourage, travel to a remote Spanish village to deliver the news to DonJuan’s father. Dona Ana is still besotted by DonJuan. We learn about Don Juan’s father and the civil unrest occurring due to the Don Juan’s father’s poorly managed properties.
The descriptions and political rivalries mirror the issues of the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.
This book was first published in 1938.
The descriptions and political rivalries mirror the issues of the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.
This book was first published in 1938.
June 6, 2024
A strange book by any stretch of the imagination. Not my cup of tea by any means.
March 18, 2024
I was happy to learn that “After the Death of Don Juan” was published between “Summer Will Show” and “The Corner That Held Them”, because it has the feel of a transitional novel. Warner’s first four novels are, if not conventional, at least somewhat conventionally structured: there’s a heroine (or hero, in the case of “Mr. Fortune’s Maggot”) and the book follows their adventures. The last two, however, center on an institution — a convent or a family company — and follow its development over time: individual characters hold the stage for a moment but inevitably surrender it. Rather than historical fiction, it’s more as if Warner is trying to write fictional history. “After the Death of Don Juan”, however, falls somewhere in the middle, as if Warner had become dissatisfied with the idea of a novel centered around a single character (or at least felt that she had gone as far as she could with it) and wanted to try something new, but wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. The result is a novel that shifts its focus slowly from one group of characters to another, but without the passage of time to justify it. It’s almost as if Warner lost interest in her original characters and decided she wanted to write a different book, but didn’t feel like going back and starting over. Which may well have been the case: the book was published in 1938, and one assumes that Warner, a dedicated Communist, intended her novel set in Spain to comment on the Spanish Civil War. (Like many British leftists, she had spent time in Spain in 1936 and 1937, doing what she could to bolster the Republican cause.) The increasing inevitability of Franco’s victory may be responsible for the slow curdling of the atmosphere of a book that starts out, if not lighthearted, at least wryly satirical.
For one thing, it doesn’t take Warner long to start questioning the very premise of her book, implied by the title: do we know that Don Juan is really dead? All the evidence that the main characters have for this is the testimony of his servant Leporello, who is a confirmed liar and almost as big of a rascal as his master, that he saw a walking, talking statue drag Don Juan down to hell. (Warner seems to have been working from the story as told in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”, which is also the version that I’m familiar with: I don’t know if other sources, such as Byron’s poem, tell it differently.) As Warner points out, this is a story that would seem to require more evidentiary support than it has: more likely, Leporello simply made something up to cover for his master’s absence. The fact that the aristocrats who are at the center of the first part of the book believe it is just further proof of their foolishness. The virtuous Dona Anna, for one, doesn’t seem to be thanking God for the death of her father’s murderer the way that she should be: her ongoing obsession with Don Juan almost suggests that she regards his vanishing as a judgment on her attractiveness rather than his crimes. At any rate, she insists on visiting Don Juan’s family estate to break the news to his father, and Don Ottavio, who is weak-willed and not too bright, goes along with it.
Once the party arrives, though, the cast of characters, and the tone, start to change. The peasants who work on the estate slowly take center stage from the aristocrats, and the center of the book becomes an irrigation project — Don Juan’s father plans to invest the money he used to spend supporting his no-good son in this instead — rather than a libertine. This becomes even more true when, as foreshadowed, Don Juan proves that Leporello was lying about what happened to him by showing up at the manor himself. Warner’s Don Juan is not exactly a lothario: when Dona Anna all but invites him to try seducing her again, he contemptuously dismisses her. Instead, he sees the merit in his father’s irrigation project, except for one detail: rather than using it to help out the peasants, he proposes to kick them out and use the newly irrigated land for commercial agriculture instead. His father is outraged at this violation of traditional mores and liberal principles, but his aristocratic liberalism is utterly ineffectual. A peasant revolt poses a more serious obstacle to Don Juan’s plans, but Don Ottavio, now firmly on the side of a man whom not too long ago he had sworn to kill (after Don Juan killed Dona Anna’s father), manages to go to get help. He returns with a company of soldiers, and the book ends with a handful of peasants, outnumbered and outgunned, making a suicidal last stand.
The contrast with the ending of “Summer Will Show”, in which the defeat of a popular uprising may simply be laying the seeds for future victories, is striking: Warner leaves fairly little to hope for here, presumably reflecting a darkening of her mood along with the rise of fascism in the ‘30s. But the contrast with the beginning of the book is even more striking: the novel ends with one group of characters engaged in a desperate struggle over something that the completely different group of characters it opens on didn’t even know about. Warner does her best to make the transition as smooth as possible, but it’s bound to make the book appear a bit disjointed. Dona Anna, for instance, starts out as a central character but is almost totally sidelined by the end: her main role turns out to be to allow Warner to shift the action to where she wants it. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be any reason for Warner to use the story of Don Juan as her jumping-off point at all: by the end of the book she has mostly dropped the characters she takes from it, and her version of Don Juan shares only a name and a Spanish aristocratic heritage with the original. While in “The Corner That Held Them”, the transition from one group of characters to the next is accomplished naturally by the flow of time, here it inevitably feels artificial, driven by the author’s decision (possibly prompted by increasing despair at the course of war in Spain). It’s also worth noting that Warner’s Spanish peasants are not her most successful creations: I quite enjoyed the feckless aristocrats, but more time to spend on the peasants might have made them more interesting and more memorable. Warner is always highly readable, but this is her least essential novel.
For one thing, it doesn’t take Warner long to start questioning the very premise of her book, implied by the title: do we know that Don Juan is really dead? All the evidence that the main characters have for this is the testimony of his servant Leporello, who is a confirmed liar and almost as big of a rascal as his master, that he saw a walking, talking statue drag Don Juan down to hell. (Warner seems to have been working from the story as told in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”, which is also the version that I’m familiar with: I don’t know if other sources, such as Byron’s poem, tell it differently.) As Warner points out, this is a story that would seem to require more evidentiary support than it has: more likely, Leporello simply made something up to cover for his master’s absence. The fact that the aristocrats who are at the center of the first part of the book believe it is just further proof of their foolishness. The virtuous Dona Anna, for one, doesn’t seem to be thanking God for the death of her father’s murderer the way that she should be: her ongoing obsession with Don Juan almost suggests that she regards his vanishing as a judgment on her attractiveness rather than his crimes. At any rate, she insists on visiting Don Juan’s family estate to break the news to his father, and Don Ottavio, who is weak-willed and not too bright, goes along with it.
Once the party arrives, though, the cast of characters, and the tone, start to change. The peasants who work on the estate slowly take center stage from the aristocrats, and the center of the book becomes an irrigation project — Don Juan’s father plans to invest the money he used to spend supporting his no-good son in this instead — rather than a libertine. This becomes even more true when, as foreshadowed, Don Juan proves that Leporello was lying about what happened to him by showing up at the manor himself. Warner’s Don Juan is not exactly a lothario: when Dona Anna all but invites him to try seducing her again, he contemptuously dismisses her. Instead, he sees the merit in his father’s irrigation project, except for one detail: rather than using it to help out the peasants, he proposes to kick them out and use the newly irrigated land for commercial agriculture instead. His father is outraged at this violation of traditional mores and liberal principles, but his aristocratic liberalism is utterly ineffectual. A peasant revolt poses a more serious obstacle to Don Juan’s plans, but Don Ottavio, now firmly on the side of a man whom not too long ago he had sworn to kill (after Don Juan killed Dona Anna’s father), manages to go to get help. He returns with a company of soldiers, and the book ends with a handful of peasants, outnumbered and outgunned, making a suicidal last stand.
The contrast with the ending of “Summer Will Show”, in which the defeat of a popular uprising may simply be laying the seeds for future victories, is striking: Warner leaves fairly little to hope for here, presumably reflecting a darkening of her mood along with the rise of fascism in the ‘30s. But the contrast with the beginning of the book is even more striking: the novel ends with one group of characters engaged in a desperate struggle over something that the completely different group of characters it opens on didn’t even know about. Warner does her best to make the transition as smooth as possible, but it’s bound to make the book appear a bit disjointed. Dona Anna, for instance, starts out as a central character but is almost totally sidelined by the end: her main role turns out to be to allow Warner to shift the action to where she wants it. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be any reason for Warner to use the story of Don Juan as her jumping-off point at all: by the end of the book she has mostly dropped the characters she takes from it, and her version of Don Juan shares only a name and a Spanish aristocratic heritage with the original. While in “The Corner That Held Them”, the transition from one group of characters to the next is accomplished naturally by the flow of time, here it inevitably feels artificial, driven by the author’s decision (possibly prompted by increasing despair at the course of war in Spain). It’s also worth noting that Warner’s Spanish peasants are not her most successful creations: I quite enjoyed the feckless aristocrats, but more time to spend on the peasants might have made them more interesting and more memorable. Warner is always highly readable, but this is her least essential novel.
1001-tbr
August 23, 2012Couldn't they come up with a better book cover? This cover makes me physically sick every-time I see it. :(
January 26, 2023
In the most acclaimed of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s polyphonic novels, The Corner That Held Them, there are a score of characters (mostly nuns) whose voices and stories leapfrog one another almost two centuries, while the principal locale remains a convent. What that novel achieves is a majesty of droll and bemused patience as Warner recounts small details within a succession of stories that weave characters in and out across the years. A small sampling: one of the prioresses try to acquire more funds from a nobleman with power-hungry schemes; an inspection of the convent by a Bishop comprises designs on advancement and a nun’s faltering attempts to claim a miracle; a male beggar’s impromptu responses to queries by a nun earn him residence at the convent as its priest; a novice cook’s son runs off and appears 20 years later as the leader of a band of thieves who carry off a pair of nuns. In short, the diversity of voices and incidents in The Corner That Held Them defies any single reading about, say, power, psychology, politics, or history, and it is more about how a community and its members abide.
The Death of Don Juan similarly uses a polyphonic narrative. The chief difference between the novels is the sharper temporal focus that comprises a single two-month period in late 18th-century Spain. The story is a madcap of misapprehensions, thwarted desires, vain enterprise, and hopeless need—with all of the characters situated in a microcosm of Spanish society—which ends in tragedy for the village peasants.
Warner transposes the characters from Mozart’s Don Giovanni to Seville, Spain, and it is taken for a fact—as recounted by Don Juan’s servant, Leporello—that Don Juan has been dragged into hell by demons. Doña Ana and an entourage of nobles and servants journey for a week over desert and mountains to reach Tenorio Viejo, which is presided over by Don Saturno, to inform him of his son’s death. Doña Ana is non-plussed when Don Saturno appears reluctant to express any sort of consternation or remorse. Warner has already begun to move from one character to the other to expose their varied motivations, their foibles, and their hypocrisies.
Doña Ana maintains a very public all-night church vigil, which reasons appear pious but suggest to her husband that she’s actually praying for Don Juan’s salvation. Leporello is called before the men of the town to affirm Don Juan’s death, as they are concerned to ensure he will not return to further impoverish them. Don Saturno is also concerned that his son is really dead so that he might actually, if pressed, begin to implement some measures to improve the livelihood of the peasants, and thereby, for himself. Warner weaves in a variety of perspectives from different villagers, including the priest, the priest’s servants, the schoolmaster, the tavern owner and his wife and twin daughters, the miller and his daughter, the manipulative sexton, and a variety of peasant men.
A delegation of peasant men approach Don Saturno about an irrigation project, and they are well received, convinced that he intends to fulfill the project. When rumors reach the villagers that Don Juan has returned, they assemble en masse around Don Saturno’s estate, sure that he and his son will renege on plans for improvements. Don Juan makes a mocking appearance before the crowd, but Doña Ana, acting out of pique, asserts that the man is an impostor. In a huff, Doña Ana and her husband and entourage, force their carriages through the crowd, to return to Seville. Doña Ana’s husband, Don Ottavio, slowly mounts a sense of outrage and leaves the cortege to return to Tenorio Viejo to salvage his honor in a duel with Don Juan.
Meanwhile, the villagers have laid siege to the mansion, demanding Don Saturno honor his pledge. Receiving word about some sort of uprising in Tenorio Viejo, a military contingent hurries to the village and, seeing little else that might constitute a riotous crowd, they begin firing on the peasants. Warner’s story ends as a tragedy for the peasants, their destruction all out of proportion to their demands and actions, and the violence all out of proportion to the inane behavior of the nobles that preceded. The sardonic nature of this story suggests a fabulous reading of the circumstances, that this is a tale for the ages, with relevance to the civil war that continued to rage in Spain upon this novel’s publication in 1938. However, if After the Death of Don Juan was meant as scathing satire, it sadly landed with only a dull thud, proving as effectual in provoking righteous ire as the proverbial “stern letter” one writes to nameless authorities.
The Death of Don Juan similarly uses a polyphonic narrative. The chief difference between the novels is the sharper temporal focus that comprises a single two-month period in late 18th-century Spain. The story is a madcap of misapprehensions, thwarted desires, vain enterprise, and hopeless need—with all of the characters situated in a microcosm of Spanish society—which ends in tragedy for the village peasants.
Warner transposes the characters from Mozart’s Don Giovanni to Seville, Spain, and it is taken for a fact—as recounted by Don Juan’s servant, Leporello—that Don Juan has been dragged into hell by demons. Doña Ana and an entourage of nobles and servants journey for a week over desert and mountains to reach Tenorio Viejo, which is presided over by Don Saturno, to inform him of his son’s death. Doña Ana is non-plussed when Don Saturno appears reluctant to express any sort of consternation or remorse. Warner has already begun to move from one character to the other to expose their varied motivations, their foibles, and their hypocrisies.
Doña Ana maintains a very public all-night church vigil, which reasons appear pious but suggest to her husband that she’s actually praying for Don Juan’s salvation. Leporello is called before the men of the town to affirm Don Juan’s death, as they are concerned to ensure he will not return to further impoverish them. Don Saturno is also concerned that his son is really dead so that he might actually, if pressed, begin to implement some measures to improve the livelihood of the peasants, and thereby, for himself. Warner weaves in a variety of perspectives from different villagers, including the priest, the priest’s servants, the schoolmaster, the tavern owner and his wife and twin daughters, the miller and his daughter, the manipulative sexton, and a variety of peasant men.
A delegation of peasant men approach Don Saturno about an irrigation project, and they are well received, convinced that he intends to fulfill the project. When rumors reach the villagers that Don Juan has returned, they assemble en masse around Don Saturno’s estate, sure that he and his son will renege on plans for improvements. Don Juan makes a mocking appearance before the crowd, but Doña Ana, acting out of pique, asserts that the man is an impostor. In a huff, Doña Ana and her husband and entourage, force their carriages through the crowd, to return to Seville. Doña Ana’s husband, Don Ottavio, slowly mounts a sense of outrage and leaves the cortege to return to Tenorio Viejo to salvage his honor in a duel with Don Juan.
Meanwhile, the villagers have laid siege to the mansion, demanding Don Saturno honor his pledge. Receiving word about some sort of uprising in Tenorio Viejo, a military contingent hurries to the village and, seeing little else that might constitute a riotous crowd, they begin firing on the peasants. Warner’s story ends as a tragedy for the peasants, their destruction all out of proportion to their demands and actions, and the violence all out of proportion to the inane behavior of the nobles that preceded. The sardonic nature of this story suggests a fabulous reading of the circumstances, that this is a tale for the ages, with relevance to the civil war that continued to rage in Spain upon this novel’s publication in 1938. However, if After the Death of Don Juan was meant as scathing satire, it sadly landed with only a dull thud, proving as effectual in provoking righteous ire as the proverbial “stern letter” one writes to nameless authorities.
December 22, 2024
Reason read: Reading 1001, word of the month (After). I have had this book around since 2020. I am not sure why I bought it, perhaps this was an author featured on the Virago group. I've been a little slow in getting to it but now I have and am I ever happy to have read this here and now. Townsend Warner is an English author who had a heart for Spain. She became involved with Spain during the civil war serving in the Red Cross. This story is a spin off from the myth of Don Juan but in the story one can identify many of the concerns of writers during the civil war. The story has a land owner who has peasants working land around his home. The Catholic church also playing a major part as well. And of course the military. The setting is "the seventh decade of the eighteenth century Don Juan disappears." Questions for the reader "will the removal of the heir Don Juan release the peasantry from oppression?, are the corruptions of nobility to entrenched? From the back cover--"this wry novel interlaces legend and historical contemplation."
Noted passages;
pg53. "one should never deny to any section of mankind the means of feeling itself more miserable."
pg 86. "On her ears the accustomed words fell dry and sapless as the dead leaves of autumn."
pg246. There should be justice to the poor; for though Death is welcomed to the house of the oppressed and driven from the door of the rich man, yet in the end he knocks on both doors. Neighbor should stand by neighbor."
Recommended
Noted passages;
pg53. "one should never deny to any section of mankind the means of feeling itself more miserable."
pg 86. "On her ears the accustomed words fell dry and sapless as the dead leaves of autumn."
pg246. There should be justice to the poor; for though Death is welcomed to the house of the oppressed and driven from the door of the rich man, yet in the end he knocks on both doors. Neighbor should stand by neighbor."
Recommended
September 26, 2025
This historical novel takes places in 18th century Spain. The notorious libertine womanizer Don Juan has disappeared. His valet Leporello tells an elaborate tale of Don Juan being carried off by demons to hell after killing Doña Ana’s father, the Commander. Doña Ana and her husband Don Ottavio travel to the remote Spanish village of Tenorio Viejo to deliver the news of Don Juan’s disappearance to his father Don Saturno. There is civil unrest in the village due to drought and tensions between the landowners and the peasants.
The novels initially starts out with an interesting idea, exploring the legend of Don Juan. We hear about ghosts and demons and about all of Don Juan’s affairs with married women. There are lots of characters introduced, including peasants, swineherds and priests from the village. I somehow felt a bit bogged down reading the story. Yes, for the first 150 pages, we repeatedly hear everyone’s theories about what happened to Don Juan only to have him make a miraculous appearance in the last 100 pages of the book.
There are parts of the book that I enjoyed, like reading about life in old Spain. At times, the book felt like it lacked focus, with lots of jumping around among minor characters, such as Don Guitierrez the miller and his daughter Celestina.
The author Sylvia Townsend Warner was involved in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s and her book supposedly echoes the political unrest of that period.
This book is on Boxall’s “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die” list.
The novels initially starts out with an interesting idea, exploring the legend of Don Juan. We hear about ghosts and demons and about all of Don Juan’s affairs with married women. There are lots of characters introduced, including peasants, swineherds and priests from the village. I somehow felt a bit bogged down reading the story. Yes, for the first 150 pages, we repeatedly hear everyone’s theories about what happened to Don Juan only to have him make a miraculous appearance in the last 100 pages of the book.
There are parts of the book that I enjoyed, like reading about life in old Spain. At times, the book felt like it lacked focus, with lots of jumping around among minor characters, such as Don Guitierrez the miller and his daughter Celestina.
The author Sylvia Townsend Warner was involved in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s and her book supposedly echoes the political unrest of that period.
This book is on Boxall’s “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die” list.
July 6, 2022
Well-written commentary on the Spanish civil war and a fanciful thought experiment.
March 26, 2024
If anyone could explain this book to me I'd really appreciate it
December 29, 2025
Don Juan does his aristocratic, ruling class thing; the poor pay the price. Brilliant and funny allegory about the Spanish Civil War set in 18th century Spain.
January 29, 2023
As per the opera, Don Juan was dragged down to Hell by devils whilst hosting a dinner for the statue of the father, whom he had killed, of Dona Ana. But the only witness to this was his valet, Leporello. So Ana, newly wed to Don Ottavio, travels to Tenorio to 'break the news' to Don Juan's dad, Don Saturno. While she is there, the peasants agitate for the irrigation Don Saturno has long promised, hoping that the death of his libertine son will stop Don Saturno haemorrhaging money. But is Don Juan actually dead?
This playful little novel has some delightful moments. It hops from one narrator to another while almost always staying the third person past tense; it lacks chapters and sometimes obvious breaks which sometimes made it difficult to know which character was actually speaking. In addition there is a huge cast list: Dona Ana's party numbers at least four and the nobility and servants at Don Saturno's residence is another four or five and then there are the schoolmaster and the miller and the miller's daughter and the village priest and the sacristan and at least a dozen peasants with speaking parts. In this it resembled a grand opera with many voices and it was appropriately brilliant in the ensembles. But in a novel I think this lack of focus makes it more difficult to fully bring out the characters; as a result the characterisations seemed superficial. And when one considers that the author's intent was to provide a commentary on the Spanish Civil War (the book was published in 1938, during that conflict), I suspect that there was too much for what, at 236 pages, is a slender novel. Nevertheless, I felt it was considerably more nuanced than Lolly Willowes, the author's debut, and there is a lot of amusing incident. And the pacing is spot-on: there is a very important turning-point almost ;precisely at the 75% mark.
This playful little novel has some delightful moments. It hops from one narrator to another while almost always staying the third person past tense; it lacks chapters and sometimes obvious breaks which sometimes made it difficult to know which character was actually speaking. In addition there is a huge cast list: Dona Ana's party numbers at least four and the nobility and servants at Don Saturno's residence is another four or five and then there are the schoolmaster and the miller and the miller's daughter and the village priest and the sacristan and at least a dozen peasants with speaking parts. In this it resembled a grand opera with many voices and it was appropriately brilliant in the ensembles. But in a novel I think this lack of focus makes it more difficult to fully bring out the characters; as a result the characterisations seemed superficial. And when one considers that the author's intent was to provide a commentary on the Spanish Civil War (the book was published in 1938, during that conflict), I suspect that there was too much for what, at 236 pages, is a slender novel. Nevertheless, I felt it was considerably more nuanced than Lolly Willowes, the author's debut, and there is a lot of amusing incident. And the pacing is spot-on: there is a very important turning-point almost ;precisely at the 75% mark.
February 26, 2009
This was a rather strange book. At first, it seems to be about a group of people travelling to tell Don Juan's father, Don Saturno, that his son is dead. The group consists of Doña Ana, Don Juan's latest love interest, her new husband, Don Ottavio, her priest and her duenna. Then later it's about the small village, Viejo Tenorio, where Don Juan's family comes from and all the people living there. The author describes the miller, the priest, the school teacher, the inn keeper and the farmers and the lives of them and their families. Then Don Juan returns home, not dead at all, and it all ends with a peasant uprising against the castle because of an irrigation scheme that never becomes reality because of Don Juan's debts. Don Juan finally triumphs over his father, who is tied up and left in his library, while soldiers arrive and kills the peasants. I enjoyed the book, which was well-written with interesting characters, but I think I missed a lot because I don't know that much about Spanish history.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 20, 2010
This is a work of fiction acting as an anti-facist moralty play. It is set in 1800 Spain, but was written in the 1930s as Spain was threated by facism. I loved the sense of humor the writer imbues when describing all characters and the story itself is quite humorous until about two thirds of the way through, thats when all the action happens and everyone dies. I do think that Townsend Warner provided a successful vehicle to better understand the struggles of the commoner under both fuedal and facist regimes. Also the character of Dona Ana facinated me and I was sorry to see her leave the narrative.
December 11, 2020
I disliked this a great deal. I’ve read or listened to how others have dealt with the Don Juan story (Mozart, Byron, Sibelius and Kierkegaard) and all of them deal with it much more interestingly and impressively than Warner. Her portrayal of old rural Spain is not at all convincing – having read Bazan’s brilliant “Manors of Ulloa”, this is just embarrassingly bad by contrast.
Of course I hated the lefty political satire but that’s not the reason I hated the book as a whole: she was just as nastily left wing in “Summer Will Show” but I thought that was a novel of some brilliance, whereas this is just….predictable, unfunny, unconvincing, and dull.
Of course I hated the lefty political satire but that’s not the reason I hated the book as a whole: she was just as nastily left wing in “Summer Will Show” but I thought that was a novel of some brilliance, whereas this is just….predictable, unfunny, unconvincing, and dull.
September 24, 2012
Found it fairly quick to get into, though the characters are not well drawn, there is some humour in this tale. A story that doesn't take itself seriously, with a character called Don Juan I was expecting some shenanigans, and there are plots and tricks a plenty.
Read
June 11, 2015False
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews