John Joseph Mills. Only smoke (Alfaguara).
Juan José Millás penetrates the world of everyday reality to reveal what is extraordinary in it and then accept it with the surprised humor of nonsense. He moves in familiar spaces, generally a house or a room, from which we discover the life of the neighboring house or room. And now, in Just Smoke, he reveals the reality behind the reading. The protagonist, Carlos, discovers a notebook in which his father narrates his life and tells us about his relationship with the neighbor from the next floor. But perhaps the most interesting thing about the novel is Carlos’s passion for children’s literature, which is actually also for adults. The recreation reveals another way of reading.
Mercedes Abad. Writing school (Tusquets).
In the novels of this cheeky writer, humor and entertainment are a fundamental ingredient. Here she is inspired by her experience as a teacher at the Escuela de Escritura del Ateneo Barcelonés. Not so much in the sense or nonsense of teaching someone she already knows how to write or the one she will never learn, but rather in her relationship with her students. Success seems to be the determining factor, but what attracts us readers is the tension that is being created around this teacher who decides to finish the manuscript of one of her best students. We witness the obstacles that arise at the time of writing. And, once overcome, the real obstacles and the hectic development arise: what the classmates can think about whether or not there is plagiarism.
Juan Villoro. The figure of the world (Random House).
Juan Villoro, narrator and playwright, is especially known as a chronicler for the agility of his pen, his attraction to new cultural expressions, including rock and soccer, and his perception of Mexican life. Here he pays homage to who was one of the country’s institutions, his father, the philosopher and essayist Luis Villoro. A biography that is at the same time an autobiography, and for this reason there is an intense human dimension here. Of all that the father was and of all that the son suffered and inspired him. And with his father, the family environment, where the mother will occupy a central space. A fascinating and at the same time moving read, in what it means for Juan to enter the complex world of Luis.
Clara Pastor. Voices at dawn and other stories (Cliff).
The fact that English has been Clara Pastor’s language of learning explains some of the most interesting features of this novel. The language, alien to traditionalisms or any type of rhetoric, is at the same time an appearance of distance between the characters, and the relationships are always present in the four short novels. It is as if this writing had not arisen from any tradition and Pastor was the creator of her own tradition.
Unai Elorriaga. We do not hang anyone (Galaxy Gutenberg).
Written in Basque and translated by the author, these ten stories revolve around Soro’s search for the ghostly writer Pedro Iturria, author of ten stories that follow one another as in The Thousand and One Nights or The Decameron by Boccaccio. What is interesting are the comments of each of its readers, increased when the Argentine translator Eszter Naagy appears, so that we witness a kind of different readings or interpretations, reinforced by a series of recurring motifs, such as ghosts or blood. Very nice and original book.
Laura Ferrero. The astronauts (Alfaguara).
A novel that has to attract a large number of readers. Stimulated by memory and oblivion, confusing reality with fiction, we tour Barcelona and the astronauts accompany us, since the narrator, who has lost her father, needs to invent that he was an astronaut like Maurice could have been from Doctor in Alaska, in a journey in which we are accompanied, among others, by the Grimm brothers, Nabokov, Duras or Camus. We navigate in a magical void full of suggestions.
