Dos en una

Two in One | Anaya, 2002


Mateo, a teenager whose parents have split up, will have his life changed by a chance run-in with an unknown girl on the street named Lara. Mateo gets the courage to talk to her and they set a date to meet. But that same night, he enters the club with his best friend, Carlos, and finds her looking completely different. Lara pretends not to recognize him, says her name is Clara, and yet still shows up on the day of their date, dressed normally and calling herself Lara once more. Mateo suspects that Clara/Laura has a split personality, and his father, a neurologist, confirms the existence of dissociative identity disorders. Mateo’s life turns upside down. He wants to help the poor, sick girl, but at the same time, he wants both halves of the woman he loves. Mateo will know exaltation and despair as he falls in love twice with the same girl, cheats on her with her, has to lie, to repeat the unrepeatable experience of a first kiss… All this while digging himself deeper into a hole he has no idea how to emerge from.

Written with seriousness and humor, a vivid rhythm and a third person narrator who brings the distance of age and the closeness of an accomplice, Two in One is Martín Casariego’s return to the YA genre after five years.