A man recalls a past love as he strolls through the lonely streets of Barcelona. A hitchhiker on the outskirts of the city of Vic carries his secrets in a briefcase. In northern Catalonia, a villager receives letters from a long-estranged brother and grapples with how to respond. This is the collection of short stories from the acclaimed, Catalonian author of the novel Lost Luggage.
... an excellent book from a perceptive and unshowy writer ... fascinating ... It's an accomplished book, filled with bone-dry humor and incisive observations about people who desperately need to connect, but have no idea how. It's also a powerful literary reminder that nostalgia and magical thinking both threaten the way we relate to one another, and to ourselves.
Puntí’s searing short stories, set mainly in Spain, feature characters searching for control, in spite of their general oblivion, navigating moments of regret alongside unexpected grace ... Puntí is unafraid to explore the uncomfortable rifts of his characters’ lives, particularly the lies they tell themselves to embolden or confront their justifications of their situations.
Puntí here expands his English-language repertoire with a compilation commissioned (and in some cases rewritten) between 2000 and 2016, deriving its title from a 1985 song by David Bowie and Pat Metheny. The wry humor makes it an appropriate introduction to the works of a rising Iberian writer.
