“The novel Far by Rosa Ribas – called Lejos in Spanish – translated by Charlotte Coombe, is a dark, satirical and very Spanish love story with echoes of Claudia Piñeiro and JG Ballard,” Sam Jones, The Guardian
A visit to the abandoned “Manhattan of La Mancha” south of Madrid inspired Rosa Ribas to write Far. The place struck her as a good setting for a love story. In her novel, the half-built housing estate in the middle of nowhere – abandoned when the housing bubble burst and the 2008 global financial meltdown struck – becomes a microcosm of Spanish society during a crisis.
The small community stuck there – “living under a layer of clingfilm. They were trapped” – struggles to maintain an ordinary existence regardless of being so remote. What was once marketed as a luxurious development, offering a better life, is in fact fantasy as aspirational dreams are turned to dust by economic reality. The main character is a woman dumped by her husband who buries herself in her job, and finds relief from despair in pills and Campari.
“He wanted to forget not only what he’d done, but above all the person he was when he did it and the reasons he’d become so corrupt.”
A man on the run, burdened by a grim secret, arrives and takes shelter in the unfinished part of the development which lies behind a fence beyond the completed houses with their desiccated gardens, connected by paved roads and roundabouts. The uninhabited blocks are sinister. Unseen squatters and misfits live in one zone, amidst the skeletons of buildings in various stages of completion.
The fugitive is full of dread and anxiety and goes on walks – in the dark evenings in order to avoid being seen – to assuage his discomfort. He smokes cigarettes leaning against the pedestal of a statue of the developer’s grandfather: “A life-size figure of a standing man, it represented an old farmer with wide trousers, espadrilles, waistcoat and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, gazing into the distance.” A source of inspiration to the local developer, having passed on all he knew, now all that survived was the residue of an unfinished dream, mired in shame.
The fugitive befriends an old man running away from an old people’s home and his children, who lives three streets away in an unfinished squalid third floor apartment. He is invited up for coffee out of grimy cracked cups. “The first thing he noticed was the smell. A human smell. Sweat, breath and food seeping into the open pores of the walls.” A Dominican man at the petrol station in the local town occasionally lets them use the lavatory and shower there, asking no questions.
In the finished development, a barbecue is held by the well-off residents’ association that is beset by social back-biting and feuding. The supposedly fun event turns nasty when a hungry little boy from the uninhabited blocks appears among them, wanting to eat their food. The residents eventually turn on the squatters, and ostracise the lonely woman as she is now having an affair with the fugitive, who uncovers a murder.
Ribas who is best known for her noir novels, says in The Guardian interview: “It’s a metaphor, this need to always create a community that’s against other people. That can be nationalism; it can be against immigrants, but there always has to be the ‘other’ and there always has to be a fear.”
Far is compulsively readable and weird, with its hallucinatory landscape, its surreal and fragmented world, the dark comedy, violent twists, redeeming moments of friendship and, most of all, its oddball love story between two lost people.
We are featuring Far at our book club on Monday 12 January, 6pm, Hatchards, Piccadilly. So come and join us and enjoy a new year glass of wine as well as a stimulating discussion.
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