We've all been there: you're stuck in an airport somewhere for a few hours, you've got a pile of books and your laptop and you're looking forward to enjoying a bit of peace and quiet, and then someone (a stranger, an acquaintance you normally avoid...) pops up and engages you in conversation, and you know you aren't going to be able to get rid of them until your flight leaves and/or they've told you the story of their lives. (Mutatis mutandis for the old version of this social nightmare with wedding guests and albatrosses.)

In the case of Muñoz's narrator, a Spanish academic on his way to a Borges conference in Buenos Aires from the US college where he teaches, the culprit is a businessman who identifies him as a compatriot from the copy of El Pais sticking out of his pocket. "I will never return to Buenos Aires," he tells the narrator, and proceeds to explain why. The story - of a transient fling with a woman he met in a crumbling grand hotel there - isn't a particularly long or complicated one, but both the businessman and the narrator know how to stretch out the tension with cunningly placed digressions and reflections on airports, America versus Europe, the way narrative works, the hotel trade, and so on. And of course the narrator eventually gets to Buenos Aires and discovers something that puts the whole story he was told into a quite different, and very Borgesian light.

Apart from a lot of allusions to Borges (some of which I was able to spot), there's also a Treasure Island theme running through the book, introduced by Borges's sonnet "Blind Pew", and there's also a satirical subplot of campus intrigue. We've been fearing the worst ever since we discovered that the narrator's institution is Humbert College, in Humbert Pa., where he lives on Humbert Lane and attends colloquia in Humbert Hall, and we know he's in trouble when he meets his nemesis, the redoubtable Professor Ann Gadea Simpson Mariátegui, the Terminator of New Lesbian Criticism, "who displays the surnames of her ex-husbands like a head-hunter's trophies"...

A clever, entertaining little book that sneaks in a very RLS-ish plot under a smokescreen of postmodernism. ( )

Ammetto che mi aspettavo molto di più, forse per il titolo, forse per la copertina, non saprei spiegarlo.Comunque, in sostanza è un libro che non lascia molto, pieno di tecnicismi letterari e parole in inglese (perché il protagonista, come viene ripetuto mille volte, è spagnolo ma vive in America), a mio parere ridondanti e spesso inutili. E' un peccato, perché la storia era intrigante, nonostante tutto. C'è una parte, però, che mi ha colpita: quando Claudio arriva al Town Hall e tutto quello che ne consegue. Un momento potente e ben descritto. ( )

Uiteraard vlot leesbaar, maar toch een beetje tegenvallend op het einde. OK, hij laat het lange verhaal dat Abengoa over Buenos Aires, het aftandse hotel Town Hall en de vrouw van de 15° verdieping, die hem fascineert, inpalmt en zelfs in de deur staat als uiteindelijk zijn vrouw aankomt, ook snel afsluiten.Claudio, de hoofdfiguur, docent literatuur in Engeland, noemt dit een stijlfiguur, "die momenteel gebruikelijk is". En dan doet hij het zelf ook in dit boek:ineens sluit het boek af met een vage verschijning van Carlota, de vaststelling dat haar man de eigenaar van het hotel is die ook aan de receptie zit, en de deus ex machina, de concurrente linguiste en aggressieve feministe Ann Gadez Simpson Mariategu, die zijn plaats in Humbert College afpakt. Uiteindelijk is het dubbel zielige dat hij dit accepteert, en dan maar voorleeft met de ontgoocheling en de vage herinnering

Beautiful. Sad. A great little novel by the famous spanish writer. ( )