The Holy Innocents - Miguel Delibes

A
Literary Saloon
&
Site of Review.

Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs.

Contents:
Main

the Best

the Rest

Review Index

Links

to e-mail us:

support the site

The Holy Innocents

by
Miguel Delibes

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

Title:	The Holy Innocents
Author:	Miguel Delibes
Genre:	Novel
Written:	1981 (Eng. 2025)
Length:	126 pages
Original in:	Spanish
Availability:	The Holy Innocents - US
	Los santos inocentes - US
	The Holy Innocents - UK
	The Holy Innocents - Canada
	Les saints innocents - France
	Die heiligen Narren - Deutschland
	I santi innocenti - Italia
	Los santos inocentes - España

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

Spanish title: Los santos inocentes
Translated by Peter Bush
With a Foreword by Colm Tóibín
The Holy Innocents was made into a film in 1984, directed by Mario Camus

- Return to top of the page -

Our Assessment:

A- : strong little novel of a slice of a specific kind of rural life in Spain still found not all too long ago

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
ALEC	.	(7:1) 1982	L.T.González del Valle

From the Reviews:

"Si bien Los santos inocentes centra su atención en seres humanos que malamente subsisten, si bien la obra no se preocupa de problemas transcendentales en un sentido tradicional, no por ello deja de carecer la narración de cierta envergadura. (...) En Los santos inocentes se observa una exaltación de los valores del hombre primitivo, preocupación muy comun en las obras de Delibes. También en consonan cia con otras del mismo escritor, esta novela demuestra el dominio que su creador tiene del lenguaje coloquial del mundo rural de Castilla." - Luis T. González del Valle, Anales de la literatura española contemporánea

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

- Return to top of the page -

The complete review's Review:

The Holy Innocents is set in Franco-era Spain; in his Foreword, Colm Tóibín mentions that: "There are moments when the novel could be set in medieval Europe", but despite the largely almost feudal-system-like background and dynamics, the novel is clearly set in (relatively) modern times: characters drive Land Rovers, and a mention of the Vatican Council (obviously the second one) dates the action to at least the later 1960s. Set in rural Spain, the novel features two very distinct social groups: the 'señoritos' and their families, and those who toil for them, an impoverished, un(der)educate class. As translator Peter Bush helpfully sums up in his footnote explaining what a "señorito" is -- the term is constantly used in the novel --:

A "señorito" is the son of a wealthy landowner who doesn't have to work and can spend his time hunting, drinking, and living in leisure while ordering his social inferiors about.

Shorty Paco -- a man with the keenest sense of smell -- and his wife Régula hope for something better for their children, having heard that: "their kids could escape poverty with just a bit of knowledge", but the novel opens with Régula's brother, Azarías, arguing that it's a mistake for her to want the kids to get an education, warning that: "they'll be no use, they'll end up neither fish nor fowl".
Azarías is one of the two simple-minded 'holy innocents' of the novel; the other is one of Régula and Shorty Paco's daughters, Charito, called 'Tiny' ("in truth, she was the oldest, but they called her Tiny because she seemed like a baby"). Azarías is already sixty, and generally:

Azarías rambled on from dawn to dusk, and at night he never even slept, just walked around coughing, and he'd start whining like a dog until sunrise, when he'd peer into the yard, dribbling, his pants around his knees

When the señorito who he long toiled for lets him go, Azarías turns up at Régula's and tells her he's been fired. Régula finds that: "well, the señorito can't do that if you've gotten old working for him", but of course the señoritos can, in fact, do as they please. Shorty Paco does go to the señorito to plead Azarías' case -- and that of fairness -- but the señorito sees it differently:

that's all very well, but don't you go raising your voice at me, I deserve a medal for putting up with your brother-in-law for sixty-one years, do you hear me ? this is a fine time to be giving charity to an imbecile who shits all over the place and, to make matters worse, pees on his hands before plucking my woodcocks, I mean, it's completely disgusting

Azarías' hygienic practices are, admittedly, problematic -- his sister Régula complains as well -- but still, common decency would surely demand that the señorito see to it that Azarías is somehow taken care of; instead, he just shoves him off on Shorty Paco and Régula, who do then take him in.
The arrogance of the señoritos is also reflected in their taking -- commandeering, practically -- Régula and Shorty Paco's other daughter, Nieves, into service when she is fourteen. She is a clever girl who her parents had hoped to send to school, but they can't refuse the request to have her go into service -- and, at least, they're assured she'll: "never go without in the house". But when Nieves then hopes to take Communion, as she is desperate to do, the idea is swept aside:

this girl knows absolutely nothing about anything, and her father is poorer than a pig, so how could she ever take First Communion properly ?

The general attitude of the señoritos is best summed-up in their outraged reaction to the Vatican Council:

it's the ideas they promote, they're saying they should be treated as people, and that's just ridiculous, you see that with your own eyes, but they're not to blame, the blasted Council is to blame for sowing unrest

Similarly, over years, Shorty Paco teaches young Iván to shoot and hunt, but there comes a moment Shorty Paco calls him -- as usual -- 'Iván' and the young man:

said haughtily,
from now on, Paco, you will address me as Señorito Iván, I'm not a child,
for Iván had just turned sixteen, and shorty Paco apologized, and from then on it was Señorito Iván here and Señorito Iván there, because, of course, Iván was almost a man

       Iván becomes a passionate, even obsessive hunter, shooting birds -- with Shorty Paco always at his side, because of his keen sense of smell and his general talents in handling all parts of the hunt. Azarías, meanwhile, is passionate about birds in a different way, developing a special relationship[ with some, beginning with an owl that he calls 'kitey'. The owl dies, but he continues to bond with 'kiteys', including finally a jackdaw which, remarkably, always flies back to him.
       When Shorty Paco breaks his leg in an accident, Iván is desperate to find someone who can take his place on the hunt. (Actually, he still hopes to have Shorty Paco at his side, pushing him to come along, despite the broken leg, but that proves unworkable, as even he eventually accepts.) Eventually, he's even willing to enlist Azarías. As readers probably guess at that point, that's probably not a good decision .....
       The Holy Innocents is presented in six chapters ('books'), each written essentially as a single sentence. (What amount to complete sentences of dialogue do appear in these, but are presented as continuing with the flow: no periods are used, and when normally-sentence-ending punctuation marks, like a question mark, have to be used the next word is not capitalized.) The sentences are also broken up visually, in a technique similar to that found in much of work of António Lobo Antunes, with sections with spoken words indented, as in the above example.
       As Tóibín notes in his Foreword:

Delibes put much thought into the novel form itself.

       The Holy Innocents is just one in which Delibes experiments with form, and what he has done here works well with the story. The sentence-long chapters flow well, without a sense of these being forced, run-on sentences. They reflect well the life of the humble, overwhelmed family -- and especially Azarías actions -- as well as working well in the hunting-scenes.
       The Holy Innocents presents a clear and revealing picture, almost raw in parts, of generation-, indeed century-old set-in-their-ways life conditions and a social order that still existed in Spain at the time. There's no wallowing in misery or much self-pity among the poor -- and much obliviousness on the part of the wealthy class -- as Delibes paints a vivid picture simply through the descriptions of actions and reactions. And there's a nice, brutal -- but practically welcome -- twist to finish things off.
       A strong little novel.

- M.A.Orthofer, 12 May 2025

- Return to top of the page -

Links:

The Holy Innocents:

Yale University Press publicity page
Austral publicity page
Verdier publicity page
Aufbau Verlag publicity page

Reviews:

Aviones desplumados (Spanish)
La boca del libro (Spanish)
Deutschlandfunk Kultur (German)
Esfera (Spanish)
La Ficción Gramatical (Spanish)
Mi Encuentro Con La Literatura (Spanish)
La Milana Bonita (Spanish)
On the Seawall (scroll down for review)
El sitio de mi recreo (Spanish)
Spain Through its Books
Un libro al día (Spanish)

The Holy Innocents - the film:

IMDb page

Miguel Delibes:

The complete review's Miguel Delibes page
Fundación Miguel Delibes
Miguel Delibes at Centro Virtual Cervantes (Spanish)

Other books by Miguel Delibes under review:

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Spanish literature
Other books from Yale University Press - The Margellos World Republic of Letters under review

- Return to top of the page -

About the Author:

Spanish author Miguel Delibes was born in 1920 and died in 2010.

- Return to top of the page -