Esther Tusquets
Never to Return
Trans. Barbara F. Ichiishi
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. Pp. 194. $40.00 $15.00

Reviewed by Anna Hamling

Never to Return, a complex novel with an intriguing title, begins with an epitaph from a poem by Rubén Darío's: "Youth, divine treasure, how you're leaving, never to return." The title of the novel might in fact express melancholy and nostalgia for lost youth. Yet, translated literally, it also means "in order not to return." The question of what it might be that the protagonist wishes not to return to constitutes the core of this stimulating and witty novel.

Elena--"born during the first year of civil war, on the morning in the time when the Germans were bombarding the city" (35), now a middle-aged woman--falls into a deep depression after her husband, Julio, "a tall, thin, big-nosed guy with the air of a slightly pedantic absent minded professor" (52), leaves for New York with his young lover to celebrate the premiere of his latest film. Elena's sons, both grown up, also leave her to live their own lives. Confronting her feelings of personal failure and her fear of loneliness, Elena decides to undergo therapy with a reputable Argentinian psychoanalyst, hoping to explore her inner world through "scientific" means with the "incarnate of Papa Freud, Wizard, Lone Ranger of the Pampas, the Great Witch Doctor, The Impassive One" (29), as she jokingly calls her analyst. Brought up during the dictatorship of Franco, Elena has so far accepted her role of the good wife, lover, and mother, never thinking or caring about her own emotional needs, or her own inner growth and development. She played the role of the submissive wife in a patriarchal world. Elena repeats her role in the Wizard's consulting room. She lies on a couch facing away from him. The "Impassive One" conducts his "treatment" without any warmth or affection. He might be adopting a purely scientific, psychoanalytical method or it might be an imposed gender role. "It is no use pretending you're equal to man, there are things a woman will never do" (55), Wizard tells Elena.

Elena's attitude towards her psychoanalyst is ambivalent. Sometimes she mocks him, but sometimes she recognizes the potential power of her "treatment" with Wizard. Even on the brink of giving up therapy, she cannot break her dependency on her analyst. Finally, she recognizes that the relationship she has with him follows the same pattern of power relationships that she experienced in her family and that her dependence on "The Lone Ranger of the Pampas" stems from past experiences--her attachment to her mother, to her husband, to her sons, and to others. Ironically enough, just after a few sessions with Wizard, Elena is able to confront herself and to perceive her own dependency on others.

Suddenly she is able to see the people who have dominated her in the light of their own weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and failures. She even feels sorry for her husband, Julio, in his childish belief in his own genius. Even though she decides to retain "her female roles" in the end, she is now equipped with a new awareness of her own worth, the superiority of a giver. She matures during the course of the therapy sessions and is determined never to return to the previous patterns of total dependency on others. She has learned to accept both her own imperfections and the flaws of the world in which she lives.

The novel's dry style and third-person narration seem to match the scientific discourse of the psychoanalytical method perfectly. The text itself does not give us a final answer as to whether in the end Elena benefits from her treatment. The narrative demands the reader's active participation in the creation of the novel's meaning. Never to Return satisfies us on several levels: it is brilliantly written, witty, stimulating, and highly enjoyable to read. Tusquets scrutinizes accepted gender roles, but does so in a sensitive and intelligent way. An afterward by the excellent Catalan translator Barbara F. Ichiishi about Tusquets's literary career, an extensive glossary, and the list of works in the European women series further contribute to the high quality of this edition.