The Low Voices - Hardcover

Rivas, Manuel

3.59

174 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1846558670 ISBN 13: 9781846558672

Publisher: Harvill Secker, 2016

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In this brilliant coming-of-age novel, Rivas writes humorously and philosophically on identity, belonging, memory and the nature of storytelling itself.

The Low Voices is a novel about life, it is life itself telling stories, it is the memory of the quiet voices of the people I got to know.

The Low Voices draws on a patchwork of memories from Rivas's early life under Franco. There's Rivas's elder sister, M�ria, who died young; his mother, the 'verbivore'; his father, a construction worker with vertigo who suffers two heart attacks without realising; and a supporting cast of local priests, chatty hairdressers, monstrous carnival effigies, wolf hunters, and a 'baritone cockerel'.

The book is full of personal stories such as his first fight, using suitcases for school chairs (a reminder of the grinding poverty that forced many to leave Galicia), and his burgeoning career in journalism, against a background of the unspoken dread of the Spanish Civil War at home, and the wider world as Coca-Cola sets up a factory nearby and news comes in of men landing on the moon.

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About the Author:

MANUEL RIVAS was born in Coru�a in 1957. He writes in the Galician language of north-west Spain. He is well known in Spain for his journalism, as well as for his prize-winning short stories and novels, which include the internationally acclaimed The Carpenter's Pencil and Books Burn Badly. His works have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Review:

"Beautiful... It resonates with memory, love and palpable grief... Rivas is special - funny, benign, opinionated. He tells wonderful stories because he learned early in life how to listen, and he listened to the soft, wise voices around him. Rivas misses nothing, and it is fascinating to see how, in The Low Voices, he does not tell us how he became a writer but shows us the people, such as his quiet, unassuming, determined mother, who helped make him one" -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times, Books of the Year * "One of Spain's best-known novelists... Rivas's imagery sparkles like dew in the morning sun" -- Michael Eaude * Literary Review * "Rivas has an appealing lyrical style, an offbeat humour and a translator well attuned to both." * Times Literary Supplement * "The nature of this book means it can be enjoyed as a single straight story or as individual chapters. It's one to leave by the bedside, to dip into every now and then, and enjoy over and over. Something, I think, I'll be doing a lot." -- Jim Dempsey * Bookmunch * "An affecting, impressionistic novel-cum-memoir. Like all great autobiographical writing, it pulls the magic trick of making the specific and personal universally appealing." -- Juanita Coulson * Lady *

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