Latest autofictional paths. Marta Sanz and Clavicula’s “sincere pact”

Abstract

In recent years, the repetition of certain narrative patterns in the Hispanic autofictional novel have caused among the literary community a progressive effect of disappointment with regards to the possibilities of the genre. Autofictional novels have been accused of showing “symptoms of exhaustion”, and its narrators have been described as narcissistic and dishonest. Considering the existence of a new trend in the genre inaugurated by Doubrovsky in 1977, more moderate in its stylistic abuses and considerably more committed to its social reality, the analysis of Marta Sanz’s novel Clavícula (2017) is presented as an example of this shift in paradigm and of good literary practice. For this purpose, firstly, the functioning of the biographical material in Marta Sanz’s fictions is explained, paying special attention to her previous experiential novel, La lección de anatomía (2008 and 2014). Next, based on the theoretical precepts proposed by Manuel Alberca (1996, 2007 and 2012), the narrative contract that Marta Sanz signs with the readers of Clavícula and which has been baptized here as a 'sincere pact' is analyzed in detail. Finally, following Ana Casas (2012), other formal features such as fragmentation, hybridity or metadiscursiveness are identified and developed; these, together with the reading pact, allow the novel to be classified as autofiction. The aim of this paper is to prove how Marta Sanz avoids in Clavícula any lack of honesty attributed to the genre, and turns her novel into a fraternal call, which confirms the ability of autofictional writing to alleviate not only the intimate and personal, but also collective neuralgia.