In Her Absence

By Antonio Muñoz Molina

" A] translucent novel of passion, illusion and social class....slyly witty and luminous." --Francine Prose in O, The Oprah Magazine During working hours, Mario is a dutiful bureaucrat, scrupulously earning his paycheck as an employee of the provincial Spanish 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 Mu oz Molina proposes in this short, circular novella is a model of literary strategy and style, a splendid homage to Flaubert.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590512537
• ISBN13: 9781590512531
• Release Date: July 2007
• Publisher: Other Press (NY)
• Length: 142 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.6" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

If Chekov were Spanish....

I bow to the genius of Munoz Molina. Separad was the one truly great book I read in the past decade. In Her Absence is different. For one thing, it is a smaller book. Munoz draws a fine focus on the ways of the heart. The main character convinces himself that he has found deliverance in the form of the woman he married, but it is a trick and he discovers the trick when love dies. I felt great sympathy for him, but I also felt compassion for his wife who turns all of her formidable energies to transcending the provincial life in which she finds herself. I can hardly wait to read the other of Munoz' writings.

Makes You Think

I found this book very good and thought provoking. This is written from the perspective of the husband who is the one who loves more in the unbalanced relationship. In the end, I wasn't sure what was real and what was not. I felt it was written intentionally to make you think and wonder and draw your own conclusion. I can imagine two people reading this and describing the story differently. It was surprising that a book this short and easy to read can provide so much insight into a relationship and also make you wonder about man's reaction to a love that is not appreciated.

A Masterpiece

I read In Her Absence in one breath and immedeatly started re-reading it. It reads like a poem. For me it was a revelation about the nature of human perception and its connection to emotions. It opens up the path to the mysterious side of everyday existence, and makes us question our relationship with the contemporary art. The size of the novella is perfect, compact and essential (one thinks of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, and Nabokov's Despair). It also evoked for me Dionysios' negative definition of God. A must.