Imma Monsó is well known in Spain for her eccentric and tender novels. In her ninth, The Teacher and the Beast, the first to be translated into English, she tackles the Franco dictatorship (1939–75) in a characteristically indirect way. In 1962, nineteen-year-old Severina arrives at the Pyrenean village of Dusa for her first teaching job. To protect Severina from the horrors of fascist education, her mother, Simona, has taught her at home. Simona is a dreamer who sparks her only child’s imagination and impels her to question everything. Severina grows between the ‘remote galaxy’ of her mother’s world and the quiet practicality of her father, Román, a typewriter salesman. Monsó quickly reveals that he is an anti-Franco activist, although Severina is sheltered from dangerous reality by her parents’ coded conversations. Then her loving parents die, Simona of tuberculosis and Román in a car accident. Bereft but determined, Severina learns the basics of how to connect with people (she has no small talk) and about the ravages of the 1936–9 Civil War, which has left villagers fearful and silent.

Monsó creates several fine characters who contribute to Severina’s education, including the young female teachers from neighbouring towns, interested only in fashion and marriage, whom book-loving Severina cannot understand. The novel’s greatest character is Simeó, known as ‘the Beast’ because of his size, uncouth appearance and frequent drunkenness. In a