Javier Cercas, *Outlaws: A Novel*

This is so far my favorite novel in what I consider to be a very weak year for fiction.  Set in and near Barcelona, this story of a gang member and his confrontations with the law, as seen through the eyes of one not totally reliable narrator, reminds me a bit of Eric Ambler’s A Coffin for Dimitrios.  Here is one excerpt from the novel:

Let’s go, she said.  Where?, I asked, following her: she was wearing jeans, a white shirt, sneakers and her handbag strap across her chest, like twenty years ago when we’d meet up in La Font to go out and steal cars, snatch old ladies’ handbags and rob banks on the coast.

I also quite liked “Talking to Ourselves,” by Andrés Neuman: “Women who know what they want never want anything interesting.”

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