Book
The right intention / Andrés Barba ; translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman.
Record details
- ISBN: 9781945492068 (paperback) :
- Physical Description: 277 pages ; 20 cm
- Publisher: Oakland, California : Transit Books, 2018.
- Copyright: ©2018.
Content descriptions
| General Note: | "Originally published in Spanish by Editorial Anagrama S.A. ; 2002"--Title page verso. |
| Language Note: | Translated from the Spanish. |
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Spanish fiction > 20th century. Teenagers > Fiction. Marriage > Fiction. Runners (Sports) > Fiction. Long-distance runners > Fiction. Male long-distance runners > Fiction. |
| Genre: | Short stories. |
Available copies
- 0 of 1 copy available at BC Interlibrary Connect. (Show)
- 0 of 0 copies available at Kimberley Public Library.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
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- Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2018 March #1
Lonely, desperate, obsessive characters inform the stories in Barba's latest collection. Barba (Such Small Hands, 2017, etc.), an acclaimed Spanish writer, is a master of the novella. Shorter than a novel, longer than a story, the novella is an underused form in American fiction. That's unfortunate because, done right, it's as exacting and harrowing as anything else you'll come across. Needless to say, Barba does it right. His most recent book to appear in English contains four novellas. The characters they describe are destructive, lonely, obsessive. In one, a teenage girl, desperate to disappear, becomes anorexic; in another, a newly married man gives himself over to training for a marathon to the exclusion of everything else. They're each consumed by the need to gain control over their own bodies. In Nocturne, which opens the book, a 56-year-old man takes up with a 21-year-old boy but can't escape the fear that the boy will leave him. Like the marathoner and the anorexic g irl, what he yearns for is a way to control his own desire, to overcome it entirely. Descent, which closes out the book, describes a trio of grown siblings and their tyrannical mother, who has fallen down and broken her hip. But as with the other stories, a plot synopsis doesn't do Barba justice. These plots are deceptively simple. What's not simple are the characters themselves, the ways that they struggle, and yearn, and fall down. Barba's not eager to help them back up. There are no happy endings here, no false resolutions. Instead, we get the uneasy, unsettling mysteries we get in our everyday lives. A gorgeous, fully realized collection in which each novella can be appreciated on its own as well as in concert with the others. Copyright Kirkus 2018 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved. - PW Annex Reviews : Publishers Weekly Annex Reviews
The four novellas in Barba's wonderful and intense new collection (following Such Small Hands) share a melancholy sensibility and a yearning, born of persistent loneliness. In "Nocturne," a 56-year-old man answers a provocative personal adâ"I'm so alone. Roberto."âand in short order is surprised to find himself in an intimate relationship with a much younger man. It's something he never imagined could happen, both less and more than he wants. In "Debilitation," the seemingly aloof Sara descends into anorexia and mental illness, observing her life as much as living it. The narrative has a cool economy that chills with its disaffected illusion of control. In "Marathon," a runner jeopardizes his relationship with his new wife because of his obsession with an upcoming race. Cracks appear almost immediately and widen as his training intensifies. The involvement of the runner's benevolent new friend Ernesto complicates things even more. In "Descent," the delicate balance among a group of siblings, and among their own immediate families, is progressively shifted when elderly Mama suffers a fall, breaking her hip in two places. As Mama incrementally edges towards death, each interaction changes larger family affinities. Barba's focus on a diverse cast of characters (gay and straight, women and men, old and young) in each novella gives the collection a capacious feel, memorably capturing the many, varied subtleties of human dynamics. (Mar.)
Copyright 2018 Publishers Weekly Annex.
