What the others think

A friendship between two orphans that has lasted an entire lifetime; patent leather shoes that are a precious gift for a six-year-old girl; the grandmother who learns of her own illness; the son who has to live with an addict mother; the riot policeman who can’t bear confrontation––these are some of the departure points for this collection of stories. In her first novel, Clara Queraltó takes us through settings of everyday life with protagonists who seem like extras, losers who find themselves in a life that overwhelms them and wind up in situations and beset by feelings that bind them to the universal. Fear, disappointment, doubt, loneliness, and guilt strike these people stuck on the sidelines, landing them in positions every reader can empathize with. Because sometimes life keeps pushing forward when you want to stop time, hide in a corner of the past, and not have to face the things you are inexorably forced to live through.