Now we have a chapter about the narrator meeting Luisa, while they are interpreting between a Margaret Thatcher like figure and a prime minister of Spain. There is a long digression about the work of translation, where the translator acts as conduit without remembering any of the information later.
The narrator talks about bribing some gypsies play their music further from his house so he can work. Later, he questions how he did it, thinking he should have been more diplomatic. Then, a digression of a girl in a stationery store that he had a crush on as a teenager. She still works there and he goes in to buy some items before his wedding. She is slightly younger [both in their 30s] and he has a little fantasy about having courted her when they were young rather than just going in to buy pencils without ever talking to her.
He has doubts about the wedding, reinforced by his father, Ranz. We get a long look at the father (whereas we know almost nothing about the narrator's wife, Luisa). He is an art dealer and has also worked at the Prado. An anecdote about how the father convinced a museum guard not to set a painting on fire. The father is corrupt, using his knowledge of art to trick people and get extra money.
I am seeing cleverness in this novel, not brilliance. He is able to go off on interesting tangents in a kind of tour-de-force way. Perhaps my lack of interest in fiction of this type is to blame here, but it is hard to believe that this is the best book of Spanish literature in a 50 year period.
The narrator himself is rather bland and faceless.
I am 27% into the book and beginning a chapter about the narrator's mother (Juana) the suicidal sister (Teresa) and the rather (Ranz).
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