RIP

I know ... a pretty uninspired blip! Spanish novelist Almudena Grandes died at 61 on Saturday; at her funeral in Madrid today hundreds of people turned up, carrying copies of her novels, and those who couldn't be there posted photos of their bookcases or of signed copies. She's a celebrity in Spain, but I haven't seen any coverage in English language media, so you probably saw it here first.

I discovered her via The Wind from the East, a novel set on Spain's Atlantic coast, which reminded me of Maggie O'Farrell. Next was The Frozen Heart, still my favourite, about the repercussions on an extended family of the Civil War and its aftermath. There were many "wow" moments for me as I learned more about the long-term effects. It is an early part of what was to be a six-novel cycle, Episodes of a Never-Ending War. I'd have blipped it but I read it on the Kindle :) These novels have both been published in English and I heartily recommend them.

This volume is a later part of the cycle. As far as I can tell none of her more recent work has been translated into English. I did try to read this one in Spanish, but I confess I gave up; nearly all her novels are very long, as in 1000 pages, and her sentences are long and convoluted. It was just too hard. So I gave up and read it in French. Parts of it were still hard going, but much of it is set in a part of the world we know, the Val d'Aran, and it was nice to be able to recognise places. My favourite bits were set in Bossost. There's quite a lot of her work I haven't read, so I'll put it on my reading list.