A tenor, appearing in Verdi's Otello in Madrid, becomes friendly with Natalia Manur, wife of a rich man; they are staying, with their companion, in his hotel. Slowly, their relationship develops.
The story is told in the first person from the point of view of the tenor and we are deep inside his head, treated to his interior monologue as he observes, and as he vacillates. He flicks between then and now, four years later. His thoughts are very discursive; he is rarely straightforward. In this, it is a spot-on successor to classics such as Tristram Shandy and Knut Hamsun's Hunger. Sometimes I found myself rather confused - and I think that might have been intended - in the long paragraphs which frequently stretch over more than a page. I don't think I would have finished it had it not been such a short book.
Although, given that the narration is buried so deep inside the narrator's consciousness, and given that he tells you the minutest detail, a lot happens.
Selected quotes:
- "the impression ... of a person quite prepared to smile for decades whether or not it was appropriate to do so." (p 3)
- "If you ever see a young man wearing a scarf around the end of June or the beginning of September, you can be sure that he's a singer." (p 27)
- "For the last person is the one who counts, thus, for example, it will be our last widow who will have to be consoled, and any inheritance we leave will almost always go to those who did not know us when we were young." (p 112)
September 2022; 133 pages
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