From the award-winning, internationally bestselling Spanish writer, an
immersive, provocative novel propelled by a seemingly random murder.
"Sometimes startling, sometimes hilarious, and always
intelligent...Marías [has] a penetrating empathy."--New York Times
Book Review
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*Each day before work María Dolz stops at the same café. There she finds
herself drawn to a couple who is also there every morning. Observing
their seemingly perfect life helps her escape the listlessness of her
own. But when the man is brutally murdered and María approaches the
widow to offer her condolences, what began as mere observation turns
into an increasingly complicated entanglement. Invited into the widow's
home, she meets--and falls in love with--a man who sheds disturbing new
light on the crime. As María recounts this story, we are given a murder
mystery brilliantly encased in a metaphysical enquiry, a novel that
grapples with questions of love and death, chance and coincidence, and
above all, with the slippery essence of the truth and how it is told.
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book, NPR Great Reads, and
Onion A.V. Club Best Book of 2013