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70-30
Paperback
Publisher: Rodney St Clair Ballenden
Published: Nov 26 2019
Pages: 220
Weight: 0.63
Height: 0.50 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
Arnau, an older man, embedded in the fantasy of the romantic poet, springs the barrier of reality to engage with Estel, a younger woman, struggling to overcome the strictures of her society and culture. 70-30 tells the story of their two dreams; the one of birth and the other of death. Estel, believes the purpose of life is to live for the love of a mother, a child, and to secure their material needs for the benefit of the greater society and environment into which they were born. Romance is for pretenders. Those who deny the reality of their circumstances are the pretenders and that, Arnau, the old man, as she calls him, is just a dreamer without direction. He tricks himself and not her.
This triggers a series of meetings between Estel and the old man that spurs her lover, Digger, a municipal worker, to action. Using Arnau as the excuse, Digger embarks on a mission to exclude all foreigners from the village and from their cultural traditions. The nit de Sant Joan, celebrating the gift of fire, becomes a key festival of this struggle. Only the intervention of her mother persuades Estela to acknowledge the danger of her liaison with an older man, and she agrees to obey the rules of society, and distance herself from any further acquaintances with him.
Arnau, disguised as a simpleton, carries his burning log down the mountain, and joins in the festivities of the nit de Sant Joan. When he dances around the falla mayor in the village square, Estel sees an old man dancing with the devil, and joins Digger to throw him out of the village, and out of their lives, forever.
They ransack Arnau's room, and find his notebook, the final piece of evidence needed to evict him. But, when Estel reads certain passages, she understands what he had tried to share with her, and goes in search of him to walk once more through the pathless woods.
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