Plot
In the spring of 1940 in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil war, two sons of a fallen soldier, Manolo, a sixteen-year-old boy, and his eight-year-old little brother Jesús are suffering from symptoms of tuberculosis. Their much older brother, Pepe, takes them to a rural sanatorium in Sierra de Gata near the border with Portugal. They are placed there to recover their health under the watch of Irene, the director.
Manolo is the only adolescent, all the others are children. Starting his sexual awakening, he is smitten by Vicenta, the attractive woman in charge of the care of the children. Every night when she undresses Manolo spies her. However, Manolo’s flirtations and sexual advances do not find response in either Vicenta or Paquita, a young girl who also works at the sanatorium. Instead is the sexually repress head nurse Irene, who is infatuated with the young boy. Force to assist to classes against his will with the much younger children in residence, Manolo clashes violently with the conservative authoritarianism of Doña Tránsito, the teacher. After a confrontation with her, Manolo is left to study on his own devices. Emilio an old free thinker and bidel of the sanatorium guides Manolo in his readings and teaches him about Montaigne, Balzac and Flaubert.
Disappointed with the sudden departure of Vicenta, who has to leave her job, Manolo is soon infatuated with Vicenta’s successor, María Jesús, a young pretty girl from the village and only one year his junior. Manolo’s friend, Emilio, encourages him in the awakening of his romance with María Jesús. The two teenagers are promptly discovering together their first love and sexual awakening. The local priest abruptly stops their romance; María Jesús is actually his illegitimate daughter. Pepe comes back to take Manolo and Jesús with the rest of their family and the young lovers are separated forever.
Read more about this topic: Year Of Enlightment
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
““The plot thickens,” he said, as I entered.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme—
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)