AUTHOR: Ignacio Lloret
PUBLISHER: Ediciones Eunate
GENRE: Fiction/Literature
READER’S NAME: Julia Cisneros Fitzpatrick
DATE: May 25, 2021

This is a WWII wartime story being resurrected as a “novel within a novel” by Ignacio Lloret, who has experience with documentaries. It is developed by an engaging cast of characters in a variety of time spans and in several places in the world. The main story, “La historia” is gradually revealed, like in a documentary, by several characters speaking.

Some are being interviewed, believing they are contributing to a documentary on a study on the state of book publishing, book-selling and how to keep readers reading. That story is always steeped in a special fascination with the world of books and publishing, and the readers without whom that world can fall apart.

The novel within the novel, “La historia,” is always printed in italics, you can’t miss it:

 A sunken German bomber plane, shot down off the coast of England by British fighter planes during the blitzkrieg (it was an old, slow plane), is being raised from its burial place 50 years after the incident. The purpose is, for the bomber to be restored as historical artifact and placed in an aviation museum. But that purpose is only one of the many threads in the story; all of these threads gradually reveal the back-story of the plane and its sole survivor.

He is a German soldier who crawls away, hides out in a farm shed near the crash, hoping to evade being taken prisoner. He just wants to get back to his outfit, across the Channel. The farm owner, a strong Irish woman, not fond of the British herself, decides to let him stay. It’s mutually beneficial: He needs a hideout, she needs help with the deteriorating farm.

But eventually they share a bed as well—and the danger. There is suspense, just like in a spy novel. The government needs to commandeer the farm as a safe place for small children who are being sent to the country for safety during the Nazi bombing of the cities. The soldier needs a way out of the country.

The documentary-like structure of the novel seems at times challenging for the reader--it stops the action of “La historia.”  It’s skillfully done by Lloret, however. In the “non-story” chapters, when other characters are telling their own stories, they give away new information to the reader about the German soldier’s story. That keeps one turning the pages to the end. No spoiler, though.

This book would be very apt for translation into American English. The subject matter is both historical and contemporary. Although the locale is European, the character who is writing the bomber plane story is an American novelist in California. Lloret’s style and dialogue is in short, sometimes cryptic sentences, just as one might expect among strangers on a train or at a book fair--or very intimate strangers, who have said it all before.