So To Speak

In the four stories that make up this book, the protagonists are displaced from their comfort zones by some unexpected event.

A man decides to take his family to a classical music concert and is witness to an unusual event when a spectator begins to imitate the movements made by the orchestra director and attempts to replace him. In the second piece, the protagonist prepares to play a peculiar game of dice, and his day becomes disconcerting from the moment he encounters a burly neighbor in the elevator. In the third, the purchase of two small exotic fish whose survival depends on the exact measuring of the temperature of the water turns into the motor behind unexpected transformations. And in the text that closes the volume, the disruptive encounter happens on a train and features two women—mother and daughter?—who appear to be Asian—Chinese, Filipino, Indonesian?—who are traveling in the same car as the protagonist.
With prose that is meticulously precise and a gaze that has been trained to capture the strange things that emerge in everyday life, the author introduces the reader to mysterious territories in which anything can happen….Mishaps, encounters, words, and gestures whose meaning we can’t always decipher. The vertigo we experience in the face of the unknown condensed into four stories. 

“González Sainz—like Ferlosio, Benet, Pombo, Gándara, or Gopegui—has created an ambitious narrative, with no reference points to other contemporary Spanish writers.” —J.A. Masoliver Ródenas, La Vanguardia

“A master of language who is less prolific than we would desire.” —Jon Juaristi, ABC