#RivetingReviews: Michael Eaude reviews THE TEACHER AND THE BEAST by Imma Monsó, translated by Peter Bush

Since 1996 Imma Monsó (Lleida, 1959) has written nine novels, three books of short stories and an account of the sudden death of her husband, published in English as A Man of His Word in 2014 by Hispabooks. Winner of numerous prizes in Catalonia, her work has been translated into several languages, although The Teacher and the Beast is her first novel to be published in English.

Román and Simona try to protect their only daughter, Severina, from the horrors of the Franco dictatorship. They give her a loving but lonely childhood. Simona educates her in their isolated house, teaching her to question everything. If intelligence can be taught, Simona teaches her to be intelligent. Fortunately, she has a phenomenal memory and manages to pass the Francoist exams without having to attend school or even understand the content. But Severina does not learn social skills. When she goes to college, a classmate says a casual “How’s it going?”, which causes her to say nothing in reply while she agonises for several seconds over the precise answer without realising it’s merely a social greeting. Understandably she gains a reputation for being stuck-up and unfriendly.

During Severina’s adolescence, Simona dies of tuberculosis and Román, a typewriter salesman who spends long, mysterious periods away from home, dies in a car accident. Alone, broken, Severina decides to study in Girona to be a primary school teacher. In 1962, aged nineteen, she arrives at her first job, at Dusa, an isolated village in the Pyrenees. Things don’t start off too well. People gossip of her arrogance because she doesn’t know how to make small talk, doesn’t attend the killing of the pig and doesn’t go to mass. She is saved by Justa, an elderly woman who explains the danger of not following the norms in a society corrupted by the Civil War defeat, and protected by Simeó, a huge man thirty years older than Severina, known as “the Beast” because of his crude speech, frequent drunkenness and rough manners. Anyone would want to avoid him, so big and wild! But it is he who is yet the most delicate person in the village. “He didn’t come out with any commonplace and she felt immediately at ease, as if walking alone across a dormant volcano on a bright sunny morning”. With gentle tact, Simeó draws close to Severina and eventually helps her understand the reality of Franco’s Spain. They become good friends. In Monsó, appearances usually deceive!

Monsó has the gift of making us smile and laugh about serious themes. The naivety and social incapacity of Severina leads to a lot of comedy intertwined with the sadness of her loneliness. In one example both Justa and Simeó try to convince Severina that it is dangerous to mention Lenin’s name in class. But she doesn’t know who Lenin was and sees no harm in telling her children an anecdote about Lenin that her kindly father had told her. In another example, Severina attempts to form friendships with other young women teachers in neighbouring villages but is puzzled that they are interested only in fashion, film stars and potential suitors. On another occasion Júlia, her free-thinking aunt in Barcelona, sets up a meeting between Severina and a young man. They walk round the city all afternoon, but she can think of nothing to say and he is similarly afflicted. Severina finds sexual satisfaction by herself, lying in the grass on the hillside in Dusa.

Like all Imma Monsó’s novels, The Teacher and the Beast is marked by a complex and unusual plot and eccentric but very realistic characters. Monsó structures the book through chapters alternating between Severina’s year in Dusa and her childhood. The codified conversations of her parents (Franco is referred to as Baby Jesus) show readers that Román is an anti-Franco activist, although their daughter is unable to interpret their meaning. Severina is a very moving creation: fragile, yet tough. She fights to overcome the loss of her beloved parents and understand the reality of a village twisted by silence and secrets. Bit by bit, as Severina grows, Imma Monsó shows the horror and corruption of the Franco dictatorship.

Reviewed by Michael Eaude

THE TEACHER AND THE BEAST 

Written by Imma Monsó

Translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush

Published by Gretton Books (2026)

March 2026 #RivetingReviews titles are available to buy from bookshop.org.

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Michael Eaude has lived for over thirty years between Barcelona and the highlands of inland València. He has written extensively on Catalan literature and politics. He is the author of Antoni Gaudí, in Reaktion’s Critical Lives series and A People’s History of Catalonia (Pluto Press). His most recent book is a novel, The Bones in the Forest (Clapton Press), about the victims of fascism dumped in unmarked graves.

Read Michael Eaude’s #RivetingReview of BLACK STORMS by Teresa Solana