Institut Ramon LLull

Eva often wonders if she’s settled, too soon and for too little. She and her husband Pere come home each evening exhausted and reeking of schmaltz after days spent in their rotisserie chicken shop. As their family grows, she sometimes mourns the road not taken. Will dabbing on Chanel No. 5 to cover up the smell of chicken grease improve things or only make them worse?

When a knock comes on the door one night, the comforts of Eva and Pere’s low-grade dissatisfactions are called into question, leading them to discover those flashes of the extraordinary that hide amid the ordinary. With precious filigreed prose, Dedeu’s first-person narrative tells of Eva’s ascent into middle-age in six acts that –despite their subject being her restlessness with working-class life and the monotony of a long marriage– read like a poignant page-turner.