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Dove vanno a finire le cose? Dove le persone che abbiamo amato? E quelle da cui siamo stati sfiorati e abbiamo perduto per sempre? C’è un luogo in cui ritroveremo i nostri genitori, i nostri nonni, le persone il cui ricordo si perde nel tempo?
In ogni pagina di questo bellissimo romano autobiografico ci si accorge con amarezza delle assenze di cui è pregna la vita, un inseguire volti e cose che non ci sono più.
Vilas ci consegna un racconto intimo di una famiglia negli ultimi decenni di storia spagnola, un racconto universale con la fragilità delle persone, le sconfitte, i legami affettivi in cui tutti possiamo riconoscerci.
Quei legami ci permettono di vedere, a distanza di tempo, che in tutto c'è stata bellezza: il potere del ricordo, della memoria: «la memoria è una luce prodigiosa quando abbiamo perduto tutto ciò che avevamo» ( )

Elche - Julio 2019 ( )

In what’s described by the publisher as an ‘autobiographical novel’, the narrator lays bare his life, his regrets, his failings, his fears and his criticisms of, and disappointment with, the state of his country. He’s writing in 2015, the year following his mother’s death, and ten years after his father’s and the rawness of his grief is palpable from the opening sentences of the first chapter. As he begins reflecting on his relationships with his grandparents, his parents, his ex-wife, his children, other family members and his friends, as well as his infidelities, his alcoholism, his career etc, it soon becomes clear that most of his memories are tinged with a deep-seated melancholy. He is full of guilt and regret, not only about the things he has done, but also about what he hasn’t, about his thoughtless neglect of people he loves. Although he can do nothing to change the past, he ponders what he can learn from it and whether he can now reach out to those who are still alive and, in some way, atone for the past. Woven through his personal reflections are observations about Spanish politics, the country’s complex history during the twentieth century and the long-lasting impact of the 2008 financial crisis on the lives of its citizens.
From the start, the narrator’s reflections move backwards and forwards in time and place, with memories being triggered by word associations or by looking at photographs, which appear at intervals throughout the book. This free-flowing, frequently repetitive narrative is almost unremittingly morose, pessimistic and filled with the pain of loss and regret. However, I found that one of the powerful effects of being party to this almost self-flagellating soul-searching was the sense of intimacy it engendered. For most of the time I was reading I was able to appreciate feeling so engaged with the minutiae of the narrator’s thoughts and feelings, but about three quarters of the way through the book this started to feel a bit too repetitious and depressing. The narrator’s father had been a salesman and, when commission from his sales became less than what his trips were costing him, he could no longer see any point in continuing. The narrator, an author who is not selling many books, reflects that he shares these ‘doldrums of energy’, that his father’s ‘why sell’ becomes his own ‘why write’ – when I read this I was tempted to add ‘why carry on reading’! However, I did continue and, as I turned the final page, was pleased that I’d done so.
It would be wrong to say that there are no lighter moments in this autobiographical novel because there are some occasional flashes of a rather wry humour. One example being when the narrator was at an exhibition, looking at the manuscripts of Saint Teresa of Ávila: ‘a frenzy of delirious ink, handwriting from hell itself.’ This made him reflect on the ‘materiality of writing’, suggesting that she wrote that way because her hand became tired after dipping her quill in and out of the ink … he ponders, ‘If she’d had a Bic ballpoint, she’d have written very differently.’ This led to a reflection that Moses could probably have written many more commandments but that ‘sweaty exhaustion’ caused him to stop at ten because ‘his hand got tired of chiselling stone’. Continuing with his musings, he reflects that had Saint Teresa lived five hundred years later, instead of founding convents she would have been a pop star and appeared on album covers, or maybe even founded football teams. I also enjoyed that he called many of his characters after composers, for example, his father Bach, his mother Wagner, his sons Brahms and Vivaldi, the King of Spain Beethoven. Against the background of the gloomier reflections on the themes mentioned earlier, I must say that I definitely appreciated these lighter moments!
This is an eloquently written and memorable story, although perhaps not an ideal choice for anyone experiencing any ‘doldrums of energy’! I think it would probably hold limited appeal for most book groups. I do hope that writing it was a cathartic experience for the author – by the time I reached the end I got the impression that it probably had been.
With thanks to NB and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. ( )

In subject-matter, this is the classic middle-aged male novel: dealing with divorce, parenthood, career stasis, and the death of elderly parents. And even a brush with alcoholism to make sure we tick all the boxes. The sort of book to make a wide curve around when you spot it in a bookshop.
But it's also a sophisticated postmodern literary novel, mixing fiction and non-fiction in complicated ways, including putting family photos into the text. And for all its mid-life crisis navel-gazing, there isn't a hint of self-pity here. The narrator looks at himself and the world around him with a clear, ironic gaze, and he's managed to retain his sense of the ridiculous.
The portrait of the narrator's parents is also fresh and unsentimental. They are eccentrics who never quite managed to fit into the world they lived in, and the narrator is quite open about all the things he never thought to ask them and will now never know, the family funerals he never went to.
What emerges from the text and from the small collection of lyric poems that serve as an epilogue, is an unpretentious, low-key and quite charming picture of provincial Spain in the second half of the 20th Century. There are no big political or religious conflicts going on in anyone's life here, no love stories, no great cultural moments, just the universal business of birth, death, parents and children, work and holidays.
A bit of a slow-burn book, I wasn't really sure if I liked it until a few hours after finishing it... ( )