The Estancia
by Martin Cullen, Adelphi, 400pp, £20
I was reminded of Proust’s Combray when reading Martín Cullen’s moving and detailed evocation of a childhood spent among the sophisticated environs of Calle Juncal in central Buenos Aires and on several family estancias during the early 1950s. It is a childhood seen through the eyes of a shy but remarkably observant 10-year-old whose adult self appears to have total recall.
Cullen is descended from one of 200 or so privileged, cosmopolitan families, many of them interrelated, who had owned land for three centuries. He describes the resentment they felt at the immigrants who had filled Argentina during the early part of the 20th century, and their loathing for the president, Juan Perón, and his brassy wife, Evita, whose policies were threatening their way of life.
