“Someone who has not been born or, even more so, someone who has not even been engendered of conceived is the one thing that belongs to death entirely. The person who has not been conceived dies most. […] He or she is the only one who will have neither homeland nor grave.”

Book Review:

Review by Vesna McMaster  (JUN 13, 2011)

This collection of short stories is intriguing and memorable, firstly for its peculiar themes and obsessions, secondly (contrary to what one might expect) because the earlier pieces seem far “better” than the later.

Let’s qualify “better.” The title story “While the Women Are Sleeping” is by far the longest and most self-indulgent of all the pieces, as well as being a relatively “late” piece. Pages of almost-monologue punctuated only by random, unnecessary actions do not constitute a well-crafted short story, in my view. The observations and tension do keep one reading, but in a sitting-back-with-eyebrows-slightly-raised sort of way. Arguably, the feat of retaining reader attention through the obstacle of such a construct is more impressive than if the story were crafted in a manner more conducive to the short story format. However, the bottom line is that it rambles. It’s introspective and ultimately inconclusive.

The short story is an unforgiving mistress. It has certain criteria, one of which is to swallow the reader instantly into its own specific setting and situation. This is the aim of all stories, of whatever length, but the demands made of a short story within a collection like this are far greater than those made of a novel with 300 pages to wallow in. All the stories in this collection do meet this criterion. Each one is vivid and memorable – sometimes unpleasantly so, as in the title story (it leaves one with a kind of “icky” feeling, which is undoubtedly entirely intentional).

The short story demands something else, though. It has to have thrust. If the tale drifts along in a nightmarish river of introspection, possibilities and hypotheticals, before leaving one stranded on a muddy shore with nothing more than a queasy stomach and uncertainty as to what just happened, it can never aspire to being more than mediocre. It is in this respect that the earlier stories outclass the later. They may be gawkier, but their undisguised obsessions have an energy that loses its way in the more convoluted sentences and oblique references in the later works. Though, having said “later” the latest piece in the collection is from 1998, so they are all relatively early works. There’s a certain breathless audacity needed to be able to write of a main character: “Derek Lilburn was a man of little imagination, ordinary tastes, and an irrelevant past” and still expect your reader to stay with you.

The other intriguing aspect of the collection (from an English reader’s point of view) is the seemingly near-stereotypically Spanish preoccupation with death and mortality. Eight of the ten stories deal directly with death, from a bewildering multitude of viewpoints. Add to this that the majority of the pieces are in the first person and you will get the (correct) impression that overall the collection is a head-on confrontation with issues surrounding mortality.

These issues are of a curiously philosophical nature. Mortality as connected with identity is a recurring theme, and the book is crawling with doppelgangers, mirrors, transfigurations and shadows. The self is lost, stolen, misplaced, and unknown in myriad variations. Generation and ancestry is a theme closely linked here, as ancestors and progenitors occur as echoes of the younger generations, haunting and forever directing them, even if unwittingly.

Yet these echoes, though fateful and often baleful, somehow seem to be taken as part of a natural process. Many of the outcomes in the stories are pretty dismal, but there’s a certain satisfaction of a destined, if not a just, end met: as if the Weird sisters were writing a report on the day’s activities.

This brings me back to the title story. One of the central characters is an entirely self-absorbed 23-year-old female. She has abandoned her parents and is currently seemingly content to be the idolatrous object of worship of an older man. She lies on the beach, staring into a hand-mirror, examining her perfect skin for any tiny blemishes. She says not a single word throughout the story. Such progenitor-less self-absorption is seen as a full-stop in the continuum of the general struggle of existence, and as such, more to be pitied than idolised. Perhaps this is the core paradox between Marías’ writing and his philosophy: a short story must be complete of itself, like the Midgard Serpent. His personal philosophy (as it appears in this collection) indicates that this would be the worst of all possible fates, so how could he reconcile the demands of the form to the thrust of the content? With difficulty, it seems.

I enjoyed this book, and will be carrying its images around with me for a long while, I suspect. I would recommend it to anyone interested in short stories. (Translated by Margaret Jull Costa)

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 1 readers
PUBLISHER:	New Directions (November 29, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Vesna McMaster
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Javier Marías Wikipedia page on Javier Marías
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Written Lives

Bibliography:

• Voyage Along the Horizon (1972; 2006 in US)
• The Man of Feeling (1986: 2003)
• All Souls (1889; 1992)
• A Heart So White (1992; 1995)
• Tomorrow in the Battle Think On Me (1994; 1996)
• When I Was Mortal (1996; 1999)
• Dark Back of Time (1998; 2001)
• Your Face Tomorrow 1: Fever and Spear (2002: 2004)
• Your Face Tomorrow 2: Dance and Dream (2004; 2006)
• While the Women Are Sleeping (2010)
• The Infactuations(August 2013)

NonFiction

• Written Lives (1992; 2007)

“My brother looked at me as if he were deeply offended. I didn’t think he was in the business of stealing the manuscripts of prize novels written by writers who get murdered in five-star hotels, but it was the only logical explanation that came to mind given the evidence before my eyes”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (APR 4, 2011)

It’s been a long time since I’ve read such a light hearted crime novel. In fact Teresa Solana’s latest mystery A Shortcut to Paradise is so amusing, it is very likely to stretch its appeal beyond the usual crime aficionados. The novel, however, is not a cozy, by any means. Instead it’s a satirically funny inside look at the highly competitive world of prize-winning Catalan literature. Some of us may not automatically think of bitter, murderous rivalry between competing authors who seek a lucrative prize, but then again the Booker Prize manages to stir some controversy every year–along with the occasional highly entertaining “what-the-hell-were-they-thinking” comment from judges, authors and readers.

Set in Barcelona, A Shortcut to Paradise concerns the brutal murder of prize winning Catalan author Marina Dolc, who has just won the Sixth edition of the Golden Apple Fiction prize. The prize is a 100,000 euros and the commemorative marble statue: “a misshapen fruit with a bite taken out, clutched by a hand attached to a square of Thassos marble that served as a pedestal.” Someone, apparently, was upset that Marina won the prize, and shortly after the award ceremony, that “someone” followed Marina up to her hotel room and bashed her head in with the marble statue. To add to the bizarre nature of the crime, the details of the murder mirrored those in Marina’s latest prize-winning novel, A Shortcut to Paradise. Given the timing of the murder, and the choice of murder weapon, obviously someone was so incensed that Marina won the prize, that she was murdered as a result.

Shortly after the murder, rival author, and runner-up to the prize, Amadeu Cabestany is arrested. He’d considered the prize “earmarked” for him, and when Marina won, he was initially stunned but then bitterly disappointed enough to make a memorable scene in public. The fact he has no alibi for the time of the murder makes him the perfect patsy. But Amadeu’s agent, Claudia hires the twins, Eduard Martinez and Borja “Pep” Masdeu to uncover the real killer. Because Amadeu is withdrawn, bitter and weird, he becomes the natural scapegoat for the crime, and it takes a considerable amount of ingenuity and luck on the part of Eduard and Borja to uncover the truth. Their search plunges the twins into the unexpectedly nasty world of the professional writer–a world in which smiles, compliments, and insincerity hide bitter rivalry.

The authors Marina and Amadeu create completely different books, and clearly there’s a thread of amusing speculation concerning the issue of literary merit under the text. Marina’s books are more-or-less trash but instant bestsellers with titles such as: The Rage of the Goddesses, Love Is Not For Me, and Milk Chocolate. On the other hand, Amadeu’s novels which are largely indecipherable sink into oblivion. He is “one of these brilliant, misunderstood writers, who has surrendered himself to literature body and soul.” Are trashy novels “worthy” since they sell and get people to read? What’s the use of a brilliant, intellectual novel if only a lousy 100 copies are sold? These are questions that lurk under the surface of this lively mystery.

This is the second novel, following A Not So Perfect Crime by Teresa Solana to feature the twins who are not strictly Private Investigators. The two men, complete opposites, operate a business called Trau consultants. Now in their forties, with spotty employment histories, the twins created their own business and try to stay one step ahead of any tax liabilities. Borja is the flamboyant risk-taker while Eduard is the stable workhorse who narrates the tale. Some really funny scenes take place between the two brothers as they operate on a shoestring budget and try to shift work to each other.

A Shortcut to Paradise, full of tongue-in-cheek humour, doesn’t place the emphasis on the crime, but rather the novel concentrates on Barcelona life. The cast of characters are hit in various ways by the bust of the real estate bubble, and they all struggle to survive and sometimes step outside the bounds of legality. The delightful thing here, however, is the behind-the-scenes look at Spain’s literary milieu: the viciousness, the bitchiness and the sheer wicked competitiveness of it all:

“To tell the truth, I can’t say I’ve been to many literary soirées in my lifetime, but I’d always imagined them quite differently. You know, cultured, polite people conversing in measured tones, and naturally enough, disagreeing courteously and never raising their voices. Everybody here was screaming insults. The scene around me was disconcerting, to put it mildly.”

(Translated by Peter Bush.)

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 3 readers
PUBLISHER:	Bitter Lemon Press; Tra edition (February 15, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Publisher page on Teresa Solana
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More literary settings: A Novel Bookstore by Laurence Cossé Winner of the National Book Award by Jincy Willett

Bibliography:

• A Not So Perfect Crime (2009)
• A Short Cut to Paradise (February 2011)

“Sister Maria Ines walked across the courtyard observing everything as if she had never seen it before. The bell tower, the chimneys, the gargoyles on the roofs, the stork nests, the faces on the statues of the saints in the cloister, even the moss on the flagstones and the peeling paint on the doors fascinated her. For her the signs of decay were not simply reminders of the passage of time but the telltale signs of an undying remorse that trailed back to the Fall of Man.”

Book Review:

Review by Devon Shepherd  (NOV 08, 2010)

In his latest book, The Convent, Panos Karnezis hints at the ambiguity that underlies religious faith in the first sentence: Those who God wishes to destroy he first makes mad. (Does he mean mad as in furious? Or does God drive the damned crazy, first?) And so, when a baby boy appears in a suitcase on the doorstep of an isolated Spanish convent a few paragraphs later, I was ready to be led through an oscillating narrative (is he or isn’t he a miracle?), that explored the tensions between faith and reason, independence and obedience, progress and stasis inherent to organized religion. Unfortunately, that’s not the tale Karnezis delivers, and while his minimalist prose wonderfully captures the contemplative rhythms of convent life, and well-wrought descriptive passages, interesting characters and compelling relationships abound, The Convent, which opens with so much promise, ultimately fizzles out because, not only does Karnezis fail to adequately explore the themes he sets up for himself, he commits a narrative sin – withholding key information — that leaves the reader feeling let down (and unduly manipulated) when the whole thing wraps up.

It is the early 20th century. The world has survived the WWI and the Great Influenza Epidemic. Technological progress brings economic prosperity; as the pace of life increases, so does the standard of living, leaving the newly comfortable without the time or the need for religion. As parishes dwindle, the Our Lady of Mercy convent, high in the hills of Spain, crumbles into decay, its school for novices closed for lack of interest. The six nuns who remain are as eager to be forgotten by the world as the world seems to be to forget them. And while no one talks of their past — of the life and name they renounced in taking the veil — each of these brides of Christ has lived a secular life, each has their own story to tell.

Maria Ines is the strict, but fair, Mother Superior of this group. When she’s not supervising prayer, meting out duties, or tinkering with an old Ford, a gift to the convent from Bishop Estrada, she meditates over a picture of a young navy soldier that she keeps in her room with her icons. And while her strange devotion to the photo has been noticed, no one knows anything about her relationship to this man or her secular past.

And so, when Maria Ines tells the sisters that the baby is a gift for her from God — a miracle she can’t say anything more about — and she can’t fail in her duty to protect him, the nuns accept her reticence, and whether or not they actually believe the baby’s a miracle, they’re prepared to obey their Mother Superior. Only one nun, Sister Ana, objects, and sets about convincing the Bishop that Maria Ines is possessed by the Devil.

What Maria Ines is hiding from the convent is that she had an abortion as a girl. After her lover died abroad (the naval officer), Maria Ines convinced herself that the his death was his punishment for his role in their sin. She fully expected (and wished for) God to take her life too, but when He didn’t, she took the veil hoping to redeem herself. She volunteered for missionary work in Africa, and the hardships and privations associated with her job there as a nurse thrilled her. But, a near-fatal bout of malaria sent her back to Europe and the Our Lady of Mercy convent, where every day she prays for a sign, not of God’s forgiveness, but that her redemption is even possible. After all these years, what else could the baby be but the sign that she’s been waiting for, and with her salvation so intimately linked to the child’s well-being, Maria Ines fights to keep him close to her with an energy that can only be described as mad.

However, one of the major faults of the story is that it is too focused on the question of whether or not Maria Ines will be able to keep the baby, while no one seems appropriately concerned about where the baby came from. That no one was excited, or curious, or ecstatic about even the possibility of a miracle in their midst – these six women who’ve devoted their life to the possibility of miracles! — I found odd and disconcerting. The nuns just tacitly seemed to assume that the baby was left at the convent by a woman unwilling to leave him at the overcrowded orphanage.

With that being said, there is something compelling about this book. The story of Bishop Estrada’s attempt to save a condemned intellectual moved me deeply, and there is something poignant about these women and their relationship to each other, and the simple pleasures they create for themselves isolated from the world. And while Maria Ines guilt ultimately drives her mad (ah, so that’s mad as in crazy!) that we never get to hear all these women’s stories is the real tragedy in this book.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 3 readers
PUBLISHER:	W. W. Norton & Company (November 8, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Devon Shepherd
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Contemporary Writers on Panos Karnezis
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Compelling books that hold mysteries, if not miracles: The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich The Miracles of Santo Fico by D.L. Smith

Bibliography:

• Little Infamies (2002)
• The Maze (2004)
• The Birthday Party (2007)
• The Convent (November 2010)

“She takes aggressive strides, as if kicking the air. She is oblivious to the fact that, crossing the street she now walks along, she will be hit by an oncoming car. And that while she is feeling the pain of just having turned sixteen, she will soon be feeling a different pain, in some ways a more accessible one: that of her right leg breaking in three places.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (JUN 22, 2010)

David Trueba has written an interesting intergenerational family saga translated from the Spanish by Mara Lethem. At nearly 600 pages, this book is truly a tome. Learning to Lose follows the adventures of 16-year-old Sylvia, a high school student, her father Lorenzo, and her paternal grandfather, Leandro. The book is also about a professional soccer player named Ariel. The story is told in chapters that alternate between the perspectives of these four characters.

As the book opens, Aurora, Sylvia’s grandmother, breaks her hip. Leandro takes her to the hospital for care. While he is waiting with her he peruses the sex pages in their daily newspaper. A particular advertisement about a “chalet” draws his attention. He has no formal intention of visiting this brothel but he ends up there anyway. Thus begins a sex addiction that escalates out of control. Leandro is obsessed with a particular Nigerian prostitute and is spending down his retirement in almost daily visits to her.

Leandro was once an aspiring pianist who tried to make it professionally but did not succeed. Instead, he ended up teaching piano at a prestigious Spanish school. The book talks about many conductors, pianists, and professionals in the music field.

Sylvia is sixteen and very insightful for her age. As she is crossing the street one evening, she is run over by 20-year-old Ariel, a professional soccer player who has recently immigrated to Spain from Argentina. Sylvia ends up with some contusions and a broken leg. Later on, Ariel and Sylvia begin a passionate affair. The book discusses a lot about soccer and this will appeal to soccer fans.

Lorenzo has just killed his cheating ex-business partner, Paco, when the book opens. Because of Paco, Lorenzo has been wiped out financially. Lorenzo is Sylvia’s primary parent, as his wife has left him for another man and Sylvia resides with him. We are privy to Lorenzo’s concerns about the police and his thoughts about the murder. We are voyeurs to his somewhat kinky sexual appetites. He worries about Sylvia but is not good at connecting with her. Lorenzo begins to date Daniela, a childcare worker in his building.

The novel raises interesting questions about morality, ethics, loss, love, and intimacy. The narrative is a bit blunted and not as fluid as I would have liked. I presume this is due to the translation. However, the reader will be kept turning pages, wondering whether Lorenzo will be caught by the police. Will Aurora find out about Leandro’s sex addiction? Will Sylvia and Ariel’s affair become public? If so, will they be harmed since Sylvia is a minor? There is a lot going on in this novel and I look forward to reading more of David Trueba’s work.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 7 readers
PUBLISHER:	Other Press (June 22, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on David Trueba
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another novel set in Madrid: Child’s Play by Carmen Posada

Bibliography:

• Learning to Lose (June 2010 in English)

“Nobody can get more than they already know from a book. They lack the ears to hear what they have not deduced from their own lived experience.”

Book Review:

Review by Mary Whipple (SEP 2, 2009)

The first several pages of this Spanish gothic melodrama might be enough to discourage even the most intrepid reader—overblown prose, trite imagery, clichés, self-conscious attempts to play on the reader’s heartstrings, and an undeniable straining for “effect.” Then in a twist, the reader discovers that this excerpt is merely the beginning of a manuscript about a child murder written by Luisa Davila, the main character in the larger novel.  And as the reader is saying “Whew,” at the thought of having escaped three hundred pages of such writing, the author introduces us to Luisa, a Madrid single mother who has written several successful mysteries starring her two detective heroes, psychoanalyst Carmen O’Inns and her partner Isaac Tonnu. Luisa, aged fifty-two and gifted with a “rampant imagination,” has just moved into a new Madrid apartment with her eleven-year-old daughter Elba, named for the island where Luisa, then aged forty, conceived her while on a “mating trip.” The new apartment will allow Elba to attend the private English High School which Luisa attended as a child.

What follows is an unusual variation of metafiction, in which Luisa simultaneously creates her over-the-top novel about the death of a child at a private school, describes the similar death of a child forty years ago when she herself was an eleven-year-old student at her private school, and then relates details about another remarkably similar death of a child at the same private school during the time that her daughter Elba is a student. Three young boys. Three deaths. Three mysteries.

When Luisa takes Elba to school on the first day, she expects that there will be no one she recognizes from the past—after all, she is older than most of the parents of children of Elba’s age by about ten years. Yet, amazingly, she finds that her best friend from school, Sofia Marquez, is going to be Elba’s teacher, and even more amazingly, that Sofia’s daughter Avril, is not only in the same class but is about to become Elba’s best friend. When Luisa was a child, she, Sofia, Miguel Gasset, and his more talented identical twin Antonio Gasset, were constantly together, until Antonio fell, broke his neck, and died, an accident that Luisa has still not fully reconciled. She also discovers that Miguel, the third living member of the group, now the survivor of four marriages, has a son Miguel (“Miki”) who is also in the same class at school. When Miki dies soon afterward in a similar fall at school, Luisa’s imagination works overtime as she tries to remember all the details about Antonio’s death and then tries to find out more information about the similar death of Miki.

Everyone she has ever known, including Sofia, Miguel, Elba’s best friend Avril, and even Elba herself come under Luisa’s scrutiny as she tries to decide if someone she has loved could possibly be a murderer. In the meantime, Luisa, a sexually liberated woman, has an affair with someone about whom she is unsure, maintains her relationship with a long-time lover, and tries to be a role model for Elba, who is sexually precocious at age eleven, with a fondness for Antonio, the 28-year-old son of Luisa’s friend Miguel, twin brother of the victim from a generation ago. The several investigations on three different levels—the imagined story, the death from forty years ago, and the recent death of Miki—all lead to Luisa’s lengthy analysis of people, how they respond to frustration, and the extremes to which they might be driven if provoked.

Author Carmen Posadas, born in Uruguay and, recently, a Spanish citizen, explores and analyzes all the people involved in this fraught situation, using Luisa (who greatly resembles Posadas in background) to reflect her uncertainties, never sure whether she is hearing the truth, whether she is imagining complications where they do not exist, and whether she is suspecting innocent people, including her own daughter, of heinous acts. The reader, in turn, is never quite sure whether Luisa herself can be trusted to be an impartial observer. On many occasions, the author provides three sentences of analysis and equivocating where one would do, and raises questions which cast doubt on what might be innocent actions on the part of other characters. By the time the novel ends and the deaths have been analyzed on the levels of all three subplots, the reader has come to believe fully in the philosophy of Julio Iglesias, which echoes throughout the novel: “Sometimes yes, sometimes no, sometimes you, sometimes me…” A novel which proves that gothic melodrama is still alive and well, Child’s Play raises many questions, and each reader will have to decide the extent to which these are resolved—perhaps concluding “Sometimes yes, sometimes no.”

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 4 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper (August 4, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Mary Whipple
AMAZON PAGE:	Child’s Play
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Carmen Posada (in Spanish) Wikipedia page on Carmen Posada
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More metafiction: Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour First Execution by Domenico Starnone The Way Through the Door by Jesse Ball

Partial Bibliography (only translated books):

• Little Indiscretions: A Delectable Mystery (2003)
• The Last Resort (2005)
• Child’s Play (2006; August 2009)

“A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison of vanity in his blood, and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting anyone discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets the most: his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that will surely outlive him. A writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then on he is doomed and his soul has a price.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Jana L. Perskie (JUN 15, 2009)

It must be extremely difficult for an author to write a brilliant, literary bestseller and then have to deal with the expectations of a worldwide audience waiting for him/her to do as well, or even better, with the next novel. I congratulate Carlos Ruiz Zafon on his latest offering, The Angel’s Game, a superb work of fiction where magical realism meets gothic horror and romance. Ruiz Zafon pays homage to the art of writing, and to such authors as Charles Dickens, who wrote Great Expectations, a book which plays an important role here, as well as to Charlotte Brontë, with her Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester, the couple who gave “Gothic” its name. The reader enters a world which on the surface seems normal, however, there are many elements at play which are magical, illogical and often disturbing.

Before reading The Angel’s Game, I couldn’t help but think about The Shadow Of The Wind, which I read as soon as it came out in 2004 – a wonderful book. Now, five years later, as I began to read this new novel, I couldn’t take my mind off its storyline to even consider or to compare it with its older sibling. Yes, afterwards I recognized that I had already met some of the characters who appear here, including the wonderful “Cemetery of Forgotten Books,” a labyrinthine library where each book awaits someone to choose it and give it another chance to live by making it part of the new owner’s life. The book cemetery is a “sanctuary and a mystery,” and formidable enough to be a character in its own right. “Every volume has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and lived with it and dreamed with it.” This cemetery first appeared in The Shadow Of The Wind, but that is all the two works have in common. The Angel’s Game‘s, storyline is totally new and original.

In Barcelona, late 1920s, protagonist David Martin is a writer and author of “penny dreadfuls,” (lurid serial stories appearing in parts over a number of weeks), for the Voice of Industry newspaper, a periodical which has seen far better days. Martin uses a pseudonym, as he considers himself to be a serious writer and does not want to be identified with the work which earns him his daily keep. Pedro Vidal, the publication’s star writer, is Martin’s mentor. The young man believes that he owes him much for his encouragement and for affording him the opportunity to make a decent living. As Martin’s Grand Guignol-like series takes off, new customers flock to buy the latest installments, and David’s once empty pockets begin to fill. But his colleagues resent his success.

David Martin’s favorite place in the whole city is the Sempere & Sons’ bookshop on Calle Santa Ana. It is here that he took refuge from his troubled childhood. Sr. Sempere, his dear friend for much of his life, gave him the best gift he had ever received – a copy of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Sempere also introduced him to the “Cemetery of Forgotten Books.”

Martin is released from his job at the paper – too much ill will from his colleagues, bad moral, etc., etc. On the recommendation of Vidal, he receives an extremely lucrative offer from a new publishing house to continue writing his stories, a series called “City of the Damned.” Martin signs the contract which offers him more money than he ever thought he would make. It stipulates that he will write, anonymously, segments of the story to appear monthly in hardback editions. Unfortunately, as he is later to learn, the publishers are a bunch of “second-rate fraudsters.” This deal does make him a huge “success” with the public, but he has never written a page with which he was satisfied, and in a few years he will be thirty years-old. His fans don’t even know his real name. And, Christina, the woman he loves is looking for someone worthier to receive her affections.

It is at this time that he receives his first correspondence from Andreas Corelli, a mysterious editor of a French publishing house. The genial Corelli makes Martin an offer which he cannot refuse, but refuse he does…sort of. He is asked to devote an entire year of his life, exclusively, to “working on the greatest story you have ever created: a religion.” The writer is appalled. Apart from the fact that he knows or cares little about organized religion, he is not “tempted to create a story for which men and women would live and die, for which they would be capable of killing and allowing themselves to be killed, of sacrificing and condemning themselves, of handing over their souls.” In return for his work, should he accept, he will receive all that he has ever wanted. Corelli’s initial geniality now takes on a more sinister aspect. David doesn’t refuse outright, but allows that he will give the matter some thought.

He holes up in his gothic-style mansion, topped by a tower that “rises from a facade carved with reliefs and gargoyles.” The house had been closed for years, abandoned, before he bought it, and has a murky and macabre past… as any good goth house would. Here David maniacally writes two great novels – one for Vidal to claim as his own, and one for himself. Vidal’s book is celebrated while David’s is panned. He suffers from terrible, blinding headaches and forgets to eat and sleep.

In dire straits, emotionally and physically, he finally accepts Corelli’s Faustian offer. Then he pays a visit to the “Cemetery of Forgotten Books.” He selects one, “Lux Aeterna,” by “D. M.” Who is this author with the same initials as David’s? The volume appears to be about a new religion. It seems that David Martin is not the first writer to receive the same request from Corelli. What happened to the other’s manuscript, which was obviously not what the editor wanted, or else why hire Martin? As David begins to write, to fulfill his nefarious promise, he discovers that his life seems to parallel that of his predecessor who wrote “Lux Aeterna.” This is a real mystery and quite a deadly one, with several very real corpses. All evidence points to Martin as the guilty party – the prime murder suspect. Soon David’s life begins to resemble those of the characters he creates for his penny dreadful series.

The Angel’s Game kept me riveted to the page. Ruiz Zafon’s gift for remarkable storytelling shines. As one reads his elegant, frequently poetic prose, the theme of the beauty of the written word becomes manifested in the author’s narrative. He paints the city of Barcelona with a dark brush. And his characters are wonderfully original.

The novel’s one weakness is the conclusion. I was disappointed in the facile manner in which all the threads were tied together, but not disappointed enough to rate this fascinating tale anything less than 5 stars.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 396 readers
PUBLISHER:	Doubleday (June 16, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Jana L. Perskie
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Carlos Ruiz Zafon Q&A with Carlos Ruiz Zafon
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of Shadow of the Wind If you like this, try: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Bibliography:

• Shadow of the Wind (2002; 2004 in US) 
• The Angel’s Game (2009)
• The Prisoner of Heaven (2012)
• The Watcher in the Shadows (June 2013)

Young Adult:

• The Prince of Mist (1993; 2010)
• The Midnight Palace (2011)

“The world is wonderful because the world is horrible. And therein lies [a] great wisdom. The crazies get on a bus with a bomb and kill all the passengers. Or that gigantic wave that was on every TV news show. Those are things that make the world wonderful…A world like us. For us. Isn’t it wonderful?”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Mary Whipple (MAY 30, 2009)

Filled with the fragmentation, incoherence and ambiguity that typify much of post-modernist thought, Wonderful World is a challenge for the reader, since the very characteristics which make it “post-modern” are also characteristics which are off-putting for readers who expect a novel to have a clear beginning, middle, and end. And when that novel is almost five hundred pages long, the challenges are even more daunting, since it is difficult to know how much of the incoherence and fragmentation is deliberate and how much may be the result of less than rigorous editing.

In his first novel published in English, Spanish author Javier Calvo creates a dynamic novel which explodes in several different directions at once by the sheer energy of his writing. Setting the story primarily in contemporary Barcelona, he introduces several plot lines which progress seemingly independently, and without explanation, for the first third of the novel, and while they and the huge cast of characters do eventually overlap, the overlaps are almost irrelevant by the conclusion of the novel.

The novel opens thirty years in the past in a bizarre, mood-setting scene in which Lorenzo Giraut, the most important antiques dealer in Spain, hides in a protective “hut” he has made from furniture and a mattress in the living room of an apartment in Camber Sands. Pope John Paul I has just died, the skies are filled with storm clouds and lightning, police cars are screaming, the “American Liaison” is climbing out the window of Lorenzo’s room, and the word “captors” comes inexplicably to Giraut’s mind.

Immediately, the scene shifts to twelve-year-old Valentina Parini, a lover of Stephen King novels, who is awaiting his next book, Wonderful World, due out in less than three weeks. Valentina has written her own book about the decapitation of the girls’ basketball coach and a bomb in her school locker room, and she plans to read it at the school talent show.

In successive scenes, a young engaged couple, vacationing in Ibiza, is told they must pay their hotel bill immediately, though he is out of money. Fanny Giraut, widow of Lorenzo Giraut, is plotting a takeover of the family business from her son Lucas, the legal heir. Lucas, in turn, is planning a major art heist with the aid of four demented criminals. Chapters of the (fictional) Stephen King book are unfolding, with a climactic battle taking place as humans try to escape “Them.” In “real” life, a war between two gangs associated with Lucas’s father Lorenzo plays out in dream sequences, as Lucas tries to unravel who betrayed his father, while his own crooks and a group of Russians compete for the same ill-gotten rewards.

Switching back and forth among plot lines and through different times, Calvo creates a wild, nightmarish world, filled with uninhibited, bawdy humor; violent sex; psychological breakdown; low-life women from all social classes , and even the history of Pink Floyd and its parallels to “life.” The characters are unknowable, though they are fully described, and their predicaments do not arouse empathy.

Unfortunately, long passages of description bog down the novel and dilute its effect—the details of an unimportant episode of “Friends,” being watched by one character, runs to three full pages, for example, and the irrelevant description of a car race for children runs for about the same length. Calvo is, however, a multi-talented young writer. His exuberance and energy operate full tilt for the entire novel, and with some judicious editing of his lengthy descriptions, he may find a broad audience in the English-speaking world for his next novel.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 1 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper; 1 edition (March 17, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Mary Whipple
AMAZON PAGE:	Wonderful World
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Javier Calvo
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and or Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	If you like this, try: The Raw Shark Textsby Steven HallThe Amnesiac by Sam Taylor

Bibliography:

• Canned Laughs: Stories (2001)
• The Reflecting God (2003)
• The Lost Rivers of London (2005)
• Wonderful World (2007; March 2009 in US)