Ordesa

Vilas wrote the most strangely beautiful book about grief that recent Spanish literature has produced. It is neither a conventional novel nor an essay: it is something in between that mixes memories, imagined photographs, digressions on the Spain of the seventies and a grief that makes no apologies. The style is recognizable from the first page and may not be for everyone, but for those who connect with it this is one of the readings that does not leave. A book that says something true about parents and time.