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El jardín

The Garden | Xordica, 2014

“This is all there is.” So says the protagonist of one of the stories in El jardín.

Behind the façade of seemingly run-of-the-mill lives heading nowhere, the characters in this book are forever tunnelling escape routes to somewhere else: a newspaper seller still living in his childhood bedroom makes plans to open his heart to the woman he loves; a security guard spends his time cracking logic puzzles, making him the laughing stock of those around him; an office worker who sleeps out in the open with the wild boars strikes up a romance with a woman as forlorn as him…

Ismael Grasa once again tugs on the reader’s heartstrings with a spare, pared-down prose style that lifts the lid on the lives of the characters who inhabit  these five stories.

PRESS

«A narrator unlike any other, who comes wielding not a pair of scissors but a simple shaving knife, its blade razor-sharp.» Javier Tomeo

«Grasa’s characters are intelligent observers who, like their author, bring their keen-eyed vision to bear on the minor details of life, which reveal more about others than a thousand psychologist’s reports put together.» David Trueba

El jardín

The Garden | Xordica, 2014

“This is all there is.” So says the protagonist of one of the stories in El jardín.

Behind the façade of seemingly run-of-the-mill lives heading nowhere, the characters in this book are forever tunnelling escape routes to somewhere else: a newspaper seller still living in his childhood bedroom makes plans to open his heart to the woman he loves; a security guard spends his time cracking logic puzzles, making him the laughing stock of those around him; an office worker who sleeps out in the open with the wild boars strikes up a romance with a woman as forlorn as him…

Ismael Grasa once again tugs on the reader’s heartstrings with a spare, pared-down prose style that lifts the lid on the lives of the characters who inhabit  these five stories.

PRESS

«A narrator unlike any other, who comes wielding not a pair of scissors but a simple shaving knife, its blade razor-sharp.» Javier Tomeo

«Grasa’s characters are intelligent observers who, like their author, bring their keen-eyed vision to bear on the minor details of life, which reveal more about others than a thousand psychologist’s reports put together.» David Trueba