The Gendered Reading Trope in Almudena Grandes’ El lector de Julio Verne

Abstract

Almudena Grandes’ 2012 novel, El lector de Julio Verne, portrays the socio-literary coming of age of a young boy, Nino, in Fuensanta de Martos, a village in Jaén, in the postwar period, and it is narrated by the adult Nino, the university professor of psychology, Antonio Carajito. Critics of the novel assert that the reading trope constitutes a means of survival for the nine-year old boy, whose delving into literary works permits him to transcend of the despondency of post-war life. However, in this article, I argue that the reading trope constitutes an incursion into postwar masculinities, in effect, that the young character’s discernment of masculinity is reflected in his choice of reading, which commences with postwar cowboy novels, and then progresses onto the novels of Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Benito Pérez Galdós. These extradiegetic elements articulate well-formulated of the issues pertinent to the formation of the young child’s tentative masculinity, such as the father–son relationship, and the socially determined nature of men’s performance of masculinity. Thus, the reading motif within this novel juxtaposes the world as perceived and understood by the young protagonist with an ideal world where masculine endeavour is richly rewarded and masculinity itself is unbounded in its potential.