I couldn’t bear to leave

Un­sta­ble Grasp on Re­al­ity

Barcelona Dream­ing con­sists of three con­nected novel­las, each 70-80 pages long and nar­rated by dif­fer­ent pro­tag­o­nists. All three hold up very well. You want them to be longer, for Thom­son tells good, fast-mov­ing sto­ries. His un­set­tled char­ac­ters long for a bet­ter life, they ca­ress it with their fin­ger-tips, but it al­ways slips away, just out of reach. Their dreams may be nec­es­sary for their san­ity, but, un­at­tain­able, drive them mad.

In the first story, The Giant of Sarrià, Amy, a mid­dle-aged Eng­lish­woman sep­a­rated from the Cata­lan fa­ther of her daugh­ter, nar­rates her re­la­tion­ship with Abdel, a pa­per­less Mo­roc­can mi­grant, whom she hears cry­ing one sum­mer night in the car-park of her block of flats. Her kind­ness to him leads to a ro­man­tic and sex­ual re­la­tion­ship that shocks her daugh­ter (do we ever con­ceive of our moth­ers as sex­ual be­ings?). The story is based in the nar­row, tree-lined streets of wealthy Sarrià, but in­cludes a part of Santa Coloma be­yond the end of the metro where Abdel and his fam­ily sur­vive pre­car­i­ously among rub­bish and rub­ble. This is the best of the sto­ries, es­pe­cially for its sur­pris­ing and plea­sur­able final twist.

The sec­ond The King of Castellde­fels is the clever­est story, for the great skill with which its at first like­able nar­ra­tor, Nacho, the self-styled ’King’ with a beau­ti­ful girl-friend and ador­ing step­son, is slowly re­vealed as an un­re­li­able fan­ta­sist. Con­vinced of his own good na­ture, though in fact a vi­o­lent al­co­holic and se­r­ial phi­lan­derer, he in­hab­its the edges of a seedy world of pimps and night clubs.

The third story The Car­pen­ter of Mon­tjuïc has a su­per­nat­ural touch. A mys­te­ri­ous car­pen­ter found at a hid­den-away ad­dress (Barcelona is a city of se­cret al­leys) uses spe­cial wood to carve a chest of draw­ers that moves on its own. Or maybe it’s just that its cen­tral char­ac­ter Vic con­sumes so much co­caine that he imag­ines the chest in mo­tion, along with a giant red-eyed boar charg­ing across his ninth-floor ter­race. Here, too, Thom­son is mas­terly in ex­press­ing in few pages the con­trasts be­tween the nar­ra­tor Jordi, a tran­quil trans­la­tor lov­ing only his books and an un­at­tain­able woman-friend, and Vic’s ex­cesses, un­sta­ble grasp on re­al­ity and sense of men­ace.

The Melan­choly Star

The three tales are con­nected by some of the char­ac­ters pop­ping up in the other sto­ries. For in­stance, Vic of the third story is a drink­ing buddy of Nacho in the sec­ond; or Montse, Jordi’s pub­lisher in the third story, is Amy’s friend and Nacho’s ex-wife. These con­nec­tions that seek to join up the novel­las are a lit­tle forced. The real links bind­ing the sto­ries into one co­her­ent book are Barcelona it­self and its Brazil­ian foot­ball star from 2003-2008, Ronald­inho. These were the years of the city’s great­est pros­per­ity. Tourism was soar­ing; busi­ness was thriv­ing; and Ronald­inho was trans­form­ing Barcelona Foot­ball Club into a mul­ti­ple win­ner of cups and leagues whilst play­ing with be­witch­ing style. Barcelona Dream­ing oozes nos­tal­gia for this re­cent past just be­fore the eco­nomic crash and Spain’s cam­paign to deny Cat­alo­nia an im­proved statute of au­ton­omy, let alone a vote on in­de­pen­dence. And like most nos­tal­gia, this is false: peace and pros­per­ity were only ever for the dom­i­nant class.

Ronald­inho per­vades all three sto­ries, but fea­tures most cen­trally as the King of Castellde­fels’ friend, though it is the foot­baller with his charisma and god-given tal­ent who is re­ally the king. Thom­son catches the toothy grin, the glam­our, the good hu­mour of the star and his un­der­ly­ing melan­choly. At 25, re­flects Nacho, Ronald­inho had reached the peak of skill and ac­claim: what in the rest of his life can match such in­ten­sity?

Barcelona Dream­ing is a very en­joy­able book. Thom­son writes el­e­gant sen­tences ex­tolling the city, with an un­der­tow of melan­choly that the longed-for, dreamed-of life is never so won­der­ful in re­al­ity.