About the Book:

Portraits of unyielding love. A woman, mostly alone in her world but for her dog, shares memories through letters to her old ‘tesoro’; a wife trusts her sweetheart psychiatrist blindly through her divorce; a young girl lands a fairy tale wedding soon to turn into a nightmare her cousin yearns to fix. Immersive, witty, tender,

Caro M, explores the hurricane-like devastation love is capable of.

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Read a Snippet:

‘Mimi says that I’m sick,’ I say. ‘That I don’t know what I’m doing. That it’s the pills. The menopause. Jerk! He says it will be the final blow to his mum and that Anna is already struggling at school and she is at a difficult stage. He has asked me to think things over, and I’ve insisted, I’ve insisted that my mind is made, that I need to take control. It was exhausting, as Peter said it would be.’

Zeno chokes at the mention of a Peter. ‘Is Peter your new boyfriend?’

‘Father Peter,’ I clarify. ‘I’ve asked him to mediate between me and Mimi because I don’t want to argue anymore.’

‘You’re using a priest?’ Now Zeno sounds plainly pissed off. He has been working with me for years. How many pills? How many Kleenexes? He wants to claim complete glory. He’s pouting as he comes to sit back on the couch next to me, looking so over-cerebral, far from pleasing – erotic-aesthetically speaking – as if he were calculating what would be the correct reward for frying a brain: 2,444 euros, one hundred and one times the reward for a toe. He should work in insurance, with me, we would make such a great team. ‘Double fizz this morning?’ I would tempt him at every breakfast. Zeno would surely end up building an all-day gin habit after a short time, but he would be happier; he would be a better man. As things stand, his career is destined to dwindle into nothing, and he may end up begging for an even more pitiful job than he already has, in an even more depressing industry (is there anything more depressing than psychiatry?). Without me, Zeno will always lack pressure and dignity and look like a bored, middle-aged perv.

‘How many times have you met with this priest, then?’ he builds up the nerve to enquire further, worried my new confidante could take away his dinner. Out of the blue he may need to battle for a compromise.

I hum. I should not make it too easy for him.

Quotes:

Your hand was trembling and you passed the note to me quickly like in a Soviet spy movie. I crunched it in my hand and walked away. I could tell you were staring at the back of my golden dress.

‘Stay where you fit in,’ my uncle had rightly advised me before the wedding, but I hadn’t taken his advice. Where exactly did I fit in, other than in the psych ward?

All his money seemed to light Laura up like a beauty pageant; not that she wasn’t beauty-pageant material even without it.

Was I a commodity for you at an acquisitive time? Were you a collector? Should I fret about the value placed on me perhaps as an exotic object? Because I was French? I didn’t think of French as exotic but then I was it, and you cannot be foreign to yourself, although perhaps I was exactly that.

We had known so little about this man yet had let Laura wed him. And at her own wedding she was crying.

‘My husband fucked the woman who delivered our baby!’ I clamour again, full of honesty. It’s good to peak twice, to extend the peak for as long as possible.

I will never forget the sweetness with which you dried their hair. It made me think the world of you; it made me think how life is to be based purely on emotion. After that, I was lost.

Was I guilty of puffing up a dream which could grow expectations larger than Albatross wings? Yes. But then I remembered how I was in violation mode, and that the only purpose of a dream was perhaps not to come true but to break all cages, breach all rules and run around fiercely free.

About the Author:

Mari.Reiza was born in Madrid in 1973. She studied at Oxford University and worked as an investment research writer and management consultant for twenty years in London, before becoming an indie fiction writer. Also by her, Inconceivable Tales, Death in Pisa, Sour Pricks, A Pack of Wolves, STUP, Mum, Watch Me Have Fun!, Marmotte’s Journey, West bEgg, PHYSICAL, Room 11, Triple Bagger, Opera and the Retreat, all available on Amazon.
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