CREMATION

A man’s death stirs thoughts among his family and friends, who are also connected by their experience of Spain’s economic surge through the early aughts.

This is the second novel by Chirbes, one of Spain’s leading writers, to be translated into English. The first, On the Edge (2016), concerned the country’s economic decline after the global recession took hold in 2008. This book, originally published in 2007, gives a view of the pre-collapse bubble as property developer Rubén Bertomeu and others ponder the death of his younger brother, Matías. Hold on to that simple precis, because Chirbes (1949-2015) isn’t an easy read. The book’s 13 main sections are each a single paragraph offering a kind of stream of consciousness, with a different character dominating each chapter. Rubén’s enforcer—for drugs and violence played a role in the developer’s success story—takes one of the leading voices and provides some dark humor. Rubén is a man whose early idealism as an architect faded, and he grew wealthy feeding Spain’s post-Franco building boom. He fell out with his friend Brouard, a novelist who long withheld from Rubén an important plot of land he owned. Brouard’s chapters show an aged, ailing heavy drinker, the subject of a biography being written by Juan, husband of Rubén’s daughter, Silvia. She’s an art restorer who has used her father's money but abhors his greed and ego. Chirbes has a larger economic theme, but he’s also concerned with the way money affects family and friendship. His prose can be dense and disorienting but it’s always intelligent, and the translation by Miles seems excellent. While the main voices are generally distinctive, they all offer the author a convenient surrogate for brief rants and lectures on everything from art to literature, sex, money, aging, flowers, marriage, politics, history, and much more.

A challenging excursion from one of Europe’s most distinctive voices.