A Pretty Face - Softcover

Reig, Rafael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1852429224 ISBN 13: 9781852429225

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 2008

Synopsis

"[Rafael] Reig delights in keeping his readers on their toes. For such a brief book — it can be read in one afternoon — it covers a lot of ground, and all of the elements come together at the end. Reig is playing around in A Pretty Face — and inviting his readers to play along."—NPR.org

“A wonderfully absurd little existential novel.”—The Independent on Sunday

“Rafael Reig’s manic inventiveness appears to know no bounds. . . . Enjoy the humour and intellectual breadth.”—The Times (London)

Children’s author Lola Eguibar is dead. With the help of her teenage character Benito, she sets out to investigate her own murder. Set in a surreal Spain that is part of the United States, where everyone speaks Anglo and the world has exhausted its supply of oil, this is a remarkable blend of crime, science fiction, and satire.

Rafael Reig was born in 1963. He lives in Madrid, where he combines university teaching with his writing activities.

About this title

About the Author

Born in Asturias in 1963, Rafael Reig studied Philosophy and Humanities in Madrid and later in New York, where he wrote his PhD thesis on 19th-century literary depictions of the prostitute. Today Reig combines university teaching with his writing and editing activities. Blood on the Saddle is the first of his novels to be translated into English.

Reviews

A ghost narrates Reig's whimsical speculative novel, set in the same alternative Madrid as Blood on the Saddle (2006). After a thug fires a bullet into the head of 35-year-old María Dolores Eguíbar Madrazo, a children's book author who writes under the name Lola Lios, her ghost seeks to find out why she was murdered. Might there be some connection with her ex-husband, Fernando Eguilaz, a famous scientist who's been hard at work synthesising neuroprotein K666 (discovered by Lola's psychiatrist father) as a potential cure for death? Lola's most popular fictional character, Benito Viruta, provides solace as she muses on what was, what might have been and what is. To really live you have to learn to die, she concludes. Reig conjures an extraordinary ending that's as elusive as a butterfly's kiss. (Dec.)
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The author of the cult favorite Blood on the Saddle (2006) returns with another offbeat, quirky novel set in a sort of alternate-reality version of Spain in which the country is now part of the U.S. It begins with the murder of the story’s narrator, Maria Dolores Esquibar, a popular author of children’s novels. Understandably, Maria Dolores would very much like to find out who killed her. Because her killers made her turn over some documents before they shot her, she suspects her murder had something to do with the neuroprotein K666, an experimental serum that could reverse the course of diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, not to mention stop death itself in its tracks. But does this mean her ex-husband, the developer of K666, could be behind her murder? And can an eccentric private eye named Carlos Clot, who likes his whiskey a little too much, get to the bottom of things? Part mystery, part science fiction, part fantasy, the novel is wholly original—and completely entertaining. It may remind some readers of the works of Richard Matheson. --David Pitt

Edition details

• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1852429224
• ISBN 13: 9781852429225
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256