New Spanish Titles

The night is huge and structureless. But it is punctuated by our hearts. It's mid-afternoon, the weather is good, father rolls up his shirt sleeves. A dog barks outside, the elm trees rustle, the tap in the bathroom drips. I can hear banging as my brother mucks around in the workshop in the garden. Mama is downstairs running the shop, or rather waiting for the first customer of the afternoon.

A semi-autobiographical novel, stirred by the stigma of an amour fou for an older, alcoholic man, The Prodigy Girls is also a comedy in several acts, and a tale with hints of gothic horror. But above all, it is a contemporary story about identity that begins in an imperfect present and passes back through all the ages of a woman.

Toni feels that he is a writer who never writes and a teacher who never teaches. He grew up reading adventure stories such as the Famous Five series by Enid Blyton, which offered him something 1970s Spain could not: unsupervised fun and freedom of movement, in other words the boundless world he yearned for in the vital transition to adolescence.

Nuria's teacher has given her a box of silkworms to look after. Little by little she learns what they are like, what they eat and how to look after them so that they grow and are healthy, as well as the process by which silk cocoons are made and how the worms become butterflies.