ORDESA

A middle-aged man dwells on his losses, frailties, and family in this unusual fiction.

Vilas is a Spanish poet, novelist, and essayist born in 1962 who has enjoyed critical and commercial success in his homeland with this book. Its narrator is a writer who’s the same age as Vilas and from the same area of Spain, so it’s possible there’s autofiction afoot. The year is 2015, and the narrator says he’s writing this book to address a malaise he links to “a blurry memory” of a flat tire on the way to a vacation in the mountain valley of Ordesa when he was a child. His mind journeys back to scenes of his own life, of his parents young and as they age, their deaths, two episodes when he was sexually abused, his heavy drinking. The self-described “chaotic narrator” shifts frequently between past and present and among details (including several photos) that range from the banal to the colorful and occasionally the weird. The tone is serious to the point of gloomy, and it may be a reader's yearning for humor that makes some of the stranger pronouncements and revelations read as tongue-in-cheek, like: “Until their eighteenth birthdays, children are blue.” Or: “I don’t iron underwear because nobody sees it.” (And one sentence later: “I don’t iron my briefs”; repetitiousness is a problem throughout.) At such times the writing recalls but doesn’t match the faux intellectual fun of Thomas Clerc’s Interior. This novel’s popularity in Spain could stem from its bitter comments on the country’s troubled history and economy, remarks that may not resonate with many American readers. But Vilas also conveys—and Rosenberg smoothly translates—many moments of pain and happiness any reader might recognize as the narrator plunges into the maelstrom of closely examined memory.

A dark and challenging but emotionally rich work.