Why This Book Should Win – Things Look Different in the Light by BTBA Judge Madeleine LaRue

Madeleine LaRue is Associate Editor and Director of Publicity of Music & Literature.

Things Look Different in the Light and Other Stories – Merdardo Fraile, Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa, Spain
Pushkin Press

For most of us, Things Look Different in the Light arrived late in the game. My own copy wasn’t delivered until after I’d already sent in my longlist picks. But I’m grateful that it’s on the longlist now, because this collection of stories has turned out to be so delightful.

In a year of many excellent short stories — and many Spanish-speaking male writers — Medardo Fraile holds his own. Ali Smith writes in her introduction that “generosity runs through Fraile’s writing like electricity, or like light and flowers do, but always in the knowledge that flowers wilt and light is a matter of darkness.” Light is indeed a key word in Fraile’s work. Most of his stories describe entirely ordinary events — a man attends a party, two women grow old, a sign painter makes a mistake — but Fraile casts a light that makes them suddenly surprising, touching, or insightful.

One of my favorite stories is “Child’s Play,” in which two ageing sisters try to ward off the approach of blindness and death by filling their apartment with light. They gradually extend their chandelier until it takes up almost the entire living room, its arms touching the walls and nearly reaching the floor. “In the evening,” Fraile writes, it was a veritable forest of glinting crystals, a bag of light, a labyrinth, a hanging city. It had to be secured to the ceiling by five chains when it reached its prime, its peak, when Flora and Martita were old, too old, and sat beneath the chandelier like two transparent raisins filled with light.

Fraile’s writing is often like this: filled with strings of marvelous metaphors, gentle humor, and light. He’s sympathetic to his characters, even or especially when they’re faintly ridiculous, and this generosity protects his stories from falling into sentimentality.

Fraile’s light touch does not, however, preclude him from addressing serious or sorrowful themes. In the story “Reparation,” a couple is robbed of their fortune while travelling by train. A few years later, the wife dies, and her grieving husband decides to become a beggar, living on charity until he has received reparations for his loss. “What one person robs another person begs,” he reasons. “Wherever there are thieves there must be beggars.”

Fraile died quite recently, in 2013. Though he was recognized throughout his life as one of Spain’s greatest writers, Things Look Different in the Light is his first publication in English. Anglophone readers too often have to wait for wonderful books; I’m glad we no longer have to wait for Fraile. Margaret Jull Costa has outdone herself with this beautiful translation; the Best Translated Book Award prize would be fitting recognition of her work, as well of the many hours of reading pleasure this book has brought me and others.