A 21st-Century Epistolary Novel Reflects “The Soul of Women”

Written in tandem by Cecilio de Oriol and Jose Lazaro, director of Ediciones Deliberar, ‘El alma de las mujeres’ delves into the world of women through an intense email correspondence.

Cover of the book “El alma de las mujeres” by Cecilio de Oriol and Jose Lazaro. (2017)

On a day like the 8th of March, all literature aimed at entering the world of women should be celebrated as a gift. The book El alma de las mujeres, distilled from the email correspondence kept up between Professor Jose Lazaro and the first-time writer Cecilio de Oriol, offers a fresh point of view on a recurring yet no less necessary subject. And at the same time, it reveals a new way of making literature. The writer sent his texts to Jose Lazaro by email: Lazaro’s reply was not long in coming, fascinated and intrigued by the flood of creativity that had landed in his inbox. The need to edit the material prompted Lazaro’s response to De Oriol’s mail, which led to an exchange of emails that recalls the epistolary relationships between writers of past centuries. A genre we might call newly created, and which has already been christened “neo-epistolary”.

Jose Lazaro, author of the book “El alma de las mujeres” together with Cecilio de Oriol. At deliberar.es

While the format could not be more innovative, the content is one more turn of the screw on the theme of the essence of woman (or “the soul,” as the novel’s title suggests). The discourse positions itself from the outset in favor of equality between men and women, with bold and well-founded statements that always stress the parity between the two sexes: “the sensibility of women – just like intelligence, feeling or intuition – is exactly the same as that of men”. But at the same time, in the pages of the book we also find other notions that examine differences, such as the way in which men and women reach (or fail to reach) love through desire, and vice versa. In the novel, these themes are handled through the dialogue between four characters, one of whom (the main protagonist) shares his name with the writer Cecilio de Oriol.  Feminist, entertaining and innovative, “El alma de las mujeres” is without doubt an essential book in these times.

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