Cremation

Starred review from September 1, 2021
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 Rub�n Bertomeu and others ponder the death of his younger brother, Mat�as. 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. Rub�n'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. Rub�n 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 Rub�n 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 Rub�n'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.

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September 27, 2021
From the late Spanish writer Chirbes (On the Edge) comes a stream-of-consciousness account of a family reckoning with its relationships—both ironclad and frayed—in the wake of a beloved uncle’s death. In Misent, a fictional Spanish coastal city, unscrupulous developer Rubén Bertomeu grapples with memories of his late brother, Matias, a former anti-Franco revolutionary philosopher turned small-time farmer. The brothers could not have been more different: Ruben has transformed the once-idyllic city into a wealthy resort town overrun by condominiums. Many of Ruben’s own family members, including Matias and Ruben’s only daughter, Silvia, take umbrage with the machinations of his exploitation of small landowners, cutting backdoor deals with municipal authorities, and surreptitiously transporting drugs into the area. Spinning the story out from multiple perspectives, including Ruben’s 29-year-old second wife; one of Matias’s close confidants; and a former underling of Ruben’s, Chirbes imbues the characters with passion and intellect. There’s no conventional plot, but what emerges is a strong sense of late 20th-century Spanish culture and politics, especially through Ruben: “I’m the sole proprietor of these memories... I preserve it.” It adds up to a fascinating look at human interactions.