Memoirs of Leticia Valle (European Women Writers

Memorias de Leticia Valle (1945) is the fictionalized diary of an eleven-year-old girl who records an “inconceivable” seduction. Set in early twentieth-century Spain, the events she chronicles take place in the village of Simancas, site of a castle that houses a famous archive. Leticia, the archivist, and his wife—Leticia’s piano teacher—are the actors in this drama, which is rehearsed in a purely introspective way. The seduction resembles that of a thirteen-year-old girl in Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed , but it does not result in Leticia’s mental or physical destruction. Rather, it acts as the catalyst for a deep questioning and exploration of life.