RaveThe Nerd DailyWhere are we? This simple question takes on enormous existential weight for the central couple of Miquel Reina’s tender debut novel ... Reina skilfully exploits [the] surreal (or \'marvellously real\') aspect to the story to investigate and reveal the long-buried and repressed emotions within the Grapes, the sub-conscious incrementally teased out as the journey unfolds, suggesting that healing (hard and painfully earned) is possible even years on from tragedy ... Reina’s immediacy of style...lends a thrilling moment-to-moment awareness of physical and environmental threat as the couple battle against the elements ... Reina in his enthusiasm and delight for his characters’ breakthrough has a tendency to overwrite the dialogue between Mr. And Mrs. Grapes-they reveal themselves to one another in an inelegant overflow of self-actualised effluvium that seems more the result of absorbing the text of a self-help book. This sometimes gross overstatement can be forgiven as Reina has built so much sympathy for the duo ... In the concluding segments, when Reina allows his authorial voice to reflect, he achieves some of his most moving, lyrically plain spoken passages. Sometimes we need to get lost in order to find ourselves, reads an anonymous quote at the start of the tale. And sometimes, when we are quite unable or unwilling to motivate ourselves, the universe will set in place its own strategy. Reina’s strategy is to embody this principle so winningly, fantastically and poignantly in this inaugural work.
