Curiously, I became interested in Rafael Reig's books with a copy of Blood in a gush that came to me from the publisher "Tongue of Rag" with messy printed pages. As my claim was never answered, I ended up reserving it at the library.
Since that old book I have occasionally come across new stories from this unique writer. And now we get the novel that seems to contain more of an autobiographical reflection, if only because of the scenarios so imaginable common with those of the author by generation and experiences ...
After a cultural event brings together his fellow university students, the narrator makes his ironic generational recapitulation and recalls the student years when they all believed themselves to be "geniuses and still immortal."
He also evokes his many adventures given to the impetuous pleasure of reading and writing, drinking and going out with girls, both in Madrid de la Movida and in the North American universities where he studied and worked.
But in contrast to that happiness without tax, and with the eagerness to be published or selected in an anthology, his memory returns something unexpected and deeper: a sharp portrait of the family, and especially of his parents, before whom - now it understand— the narrator ends up giving the measure of who he wanted to be and what he has ended up being.
And so this novel, which is read with fervor, takes us from confession to homage, and from the memorable portrait of an era and a generation, to that of a family and an individual.
You can now buy the novel «Untimely Love», by Rafael Reig, here: