The Mule

December 24, 2007
This light Spanish Civil War story follows the romantic and military misadventures of a perennially put-upon muleteer stuck fighting for a cause he doesn’t believe in. Juan Castro Pérez stumbles on a stray mule (he names her Valentina) and smuggles her into his army regiment; his plan is to bring her to his family once the war is over. Though Castro sympathizes with the nationalist forces, his region is solidly Communist and he’s forced to enlist on that side, where he, like many of his comrades, does his utmost to avoid combat and get back home; one of his more engaging exploits involves wooing a pensioner’s daughter. He eventually defects to the nationalists, and when Castro and Valentina inadvertently cross paths with a group of Communist soldiers, an unarmed Castro thinks he’s doomed until the soldiers order him at gunpoint to take them prisoner so they can survive the war. A journalist catches wind of the incident and twists the story into a morale-boosting puff piece that turns Castro into a poster boy for Franco’s cause. Castro’s dedication to Valentina provides the heartfelt through line to this winsome war story and adds a dose of heartbreak at the novel’s close.

February 1, 2008
Juan Castro Pérez, a mule driver in the Spanish civil war, finds and cares for a stray mule he hopes to bring home with him at the war's end. His affection for and tender devotion to the creature, whom he calls Valentina, offsets the senseless brutality of the war and deepens to the point where Juan cares more for the mule's well-being than of the war's outcome. (Nobel Prizewinning poet Juan Jiménez depicted a similar relationshipbetween man and donkeyin his endearing 1956 tale, "Platero and I".) The sardonic culmination of this often bitterly humorous and satiric tale reprises the theme of the accidental hero when Juan is recognized for a deed for which he was not responsible and receives a prestigious medal from a short, high-pitched caricature of Gen. Francisco Franco himself. Despite such humorous touches, the novel's overall theme is lossRepublican Spain loses the war, and, in the end, Juan loses not just his beloved mule but also his girlfriend and his boyhood chum. This is the first of prolific author Galán's novels to be translated into English; a film adaptation is currently in production in Spain. Appropriate for most public and academic libraries.Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC Lib., Dublin, OH

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