Los niños invisibles en Azul ruso de Patricia Estaban Erlés

Abstract

The volumen Russian Blue, by Patricia Esteban Erlés, compiles thirteen short stories around a series of tormented characters that escape from reality through psychological and oniric spaces. It is remarkable that the theme of motherhood is understood as a wish that never comes true, with narrative resources that evoke Gothic literature. In this collection a woman is seen abandoning her child in a residential neighborhood, two conjoined twin sisters who die at birth, a couple waiting for Candela’s arrival —the baby who will never be born— and Clara, who will adopt a reptile because she cannot have children. It is possible to observe a similar example in Fortunata y Jacinta, by Benito Pérez Galdós, which gives rise to a comparison between two Spanish literary works as distant in time as in the characteristics that constitute them.