This extended examination of the fictional works of the generation of 1930 in Ecuador is a useful addition to the scanty critical literature on the subject. For scholars who do not wish to read the novels themselves, but who want to gain an idea of their contents, it is an adequate, well-written, fairly comprehensive survey.
This said, it must be added that the book is methodologically shaky, and that it fails to answer any of the important questions about the Ecuadorian, or indeed Latin American, novel of social protest.
A major assertion throughout the book, for example, an assertion persistently repeated, is that these novels give a good picture of Ecuadorian reality. To prove this the authoress identifies major themes in the novels, and then compares what these works say on these themes with sociological and statistical material about the same subjects. At times this comparative method leads to boring longueurs—for example, the section in which the diet of the upper classes is shown to be a rich one, first in the novels and then statistically; surely such an unsurprising fact needed little more than a paragraph! At other times this search for reality in the novels can lead to errors of interpretation. The writer notes, for example, that the sexual abuse of lower class women, particularity Indians, by upper class men, is a regular feature of the novels. Then she presents the rate of illegitimacy (35% in 1942 according to her statistics) as proof that such abuses are indeed widespread, seemingly unaware of the vast literature on peasant consensual union in Ecuador and elsewhere.
This search for close approximations to reality in these novels of social protest leads the writer into even more fundamental contradictions. She insists on “parallelism” between the novel and society, yet admits that many of the novelists did not see themselves as reporters (p. 2/55). If the novelists were not attempting to be pictorial, then what is the point of demonstrating their verisimilitude? The evidence from the novels, which, it must be said, the writer presents fully and lucidly, leads to further contradictions. The writer points out that these novelists tend to ignore the towns and to concentrate on the countryside and the Indians, although all of them are townspeople. She also admits, as indeed she must, that the novels are not encyclopedic. For dramatic and didactic effect they have chosen and emphasized some themes, and ignored others. Yet, she claims, the descriptive exactness, in the subjects which they do treat, is such that they cannot be accused of distorting reality. To emphasize some aspects of Ecuadorian life and to leave out others is, some would claim, an aboriginal distortion of reality.
The greatest disappointment of the book, so concerned with social conditions and “reality,” is its failure to place the novels of the thirties in their ambiente, what impelled these young writers, but not others, to turn to social protest? why do many Ecuadorian and Latin American reformers turn to the novel of social protest as their preferred weapon? How can we set about judging the impact of this kind of writing in a logical and careful way? All these, and many other questions still await more satisfying answers.
