Tristana - BuÑuel's Film and Galdos's Novel: A Case Study

"Colin Partridge's translation is a fluent rendering of a relatively formal text, which handles deftly a range of voices including an important epistolary element. This version is excellent in conveying the cat and mouse game . . . . Partridge's accompanying critical excursus on the novel and its reception opens with a clear and useful account of diametrically opposed readings by Galdós' contemporaries, Bazán, the feminist, and the novelist Clarín. Partridge then proceeds to relate the sources of Tristana in Galdós' personal experience, notably his relations with a succession of women, including Bazán. . . . The closing section of Partridge's useful book is a critique of Luis Buñuel's film Tristana (1970), which shows how Buñuel employs cinematic equivalents of Galdós' cinematic narrative devices. . . . Partridge's critique of the Buñuel film parallels, on a smaller scale, his critique of Galdós' novel, and this enables him to feature clearly both the similarities and differences between the two works, and consequently to provide a useful account of the values of each. Both his translation and his analyses of novel and film are assured in the writing and admirable in the clarity of their presentation." -- Charles Doyle

"This translation unveils the layers of Galdós' colloquial style to reveal the subtle nuances of the original Spanish humor. With skilled narrative craftsmanship, scholastic courtship of meaning and intuitive insight into the characters, the translator has made a living novel with real people. . . . The book as a whole offers a delicate, insightful translation together with a provocative probing analysis of both the novel and the film. The writing throughout is assured, the argumentation strong and convincing; the book offers the reader fresh and exciting scholarship." -- Faith Rossiter