A place between places, a person between people: places and characters in Un amor (2020) by Sara Mesa

Abstract

The main character of Un amor (One love), by Sara Mesa, leaves the city of Cárdenas and her work as a commercial translator to settle in a house located in a village belonging to the town of Petacas and translate theatrical plays. Her reasons for living there will look suspicious both to the people of that community and the readers of the novel. After some pretextual (previous works by the author and studies about it) paratextual (mainly the title and the cover of the book), keys to analyze, this work pretends to illuminate the construction of the characters and the places of the novel, mainly through Bachelard’s poetics of space, that delve into Nat’s memories, thoughts, and dreams, and therefore also into notions or coordinate of time. By analyzing the assemblage of characters and places, a distinctive trait of Mesa’s literature, we focus on the human constellation, which is divided in intruders and natives; all united, however, by escape respect other people and places. Thus, in addition to assessing the aspects that have made this novel an acclaimed work, we will search for interpretations of a blind but revealing love. Love seems to push towards the other but also, when it is love or hate, it can imply exclusion, by choice, especially within a system of apparently invisible economic and sexual powers.