X Is Where I Am

Spanish writer Torres’s lyrical if unfocused English-language debut follows a 28-year-old writer navigating romantic turmoil and the loss of a parent. In 2019, Sara has recently relocated from London to Barcelona for a university lecturer position. Her girlfriend, D., plans to join her soon, but in the meantime, Sara takes up with a new lover, an actress referred to only as Girl. Between rendezvousing with Girl and teaching, Sara travels to Asturias to visit her mother, María Teresa, who has been battling cancer for a decade. After María Teresa dies, Sara declines to speak at the funeral, feeling unprepared and believing that “a mother’s funeral deserves silence. A thick and heavy silence that starts in the forehead and moves down, pressing against the eyelids and blocking the throat, like being drowned in oil.” D. then joins her in Barcelona, and Sara opts to cuts things off with Girl, yet she can’t shake her lingering feelings for her now ex-lover, even as time passes and the Covid-19 pandemic keeps Sara and D. cooped up in their apartment. The depictions of Sara’s unsettled love life can be wearying, though the passages on her grief are emotionally resonant. The plot never quite takes off, but portions of this emotive novel pack a punch. (Mar.)