In Her Absence Author:Antonio Munoz Molina "Part mystery, part comedy of manners. . . . The Flaubert of Madame Bovary and the Henry James of The Turn of the Screw meet in the unresolved enigma of In Her Absence." Le Point — During working hours, Mario is a dutiful bureaucrat, scrupulously earning his paycheck as an employee of the provincial Spanis... more »h town where he lives. But when he walks through the door of his apartment, he is transformed into the impassioned lover of Blanca, the beautiful, inscrutable wife he saved from the brink of personal crisis. For the love of Blanca, Mario eats sushi and carpaccio, nods in feigned understanding at experimental films, sits patiently through long conversations with her avant-garde friends, and conceals his disgust at shocking art exhibits.
Then, little by little, a strange and ominous threat begins to weigh on the marriage.
How can love survive its own disappearance? The desperate answer that Antonio Muņoz Molina proposes in this short, circular novella is a model of literary strategy and style, a splendid homage to Flaubert.« less