Castillos de cartón

By Almudena Grandes

2004

First Published

3.87

Average Rating

185

Number of Pages

5H39M

Audio Length

María José Sánchez trabaja de tasadora de arte en una casa madrileña de subastas. Un día recibe la llamada de un antiguo compañero y amante, Jaime González, anunciándole que su común amigo, Marcos Molina Schulz, se ha suicidado. La noticia no sólo devuelve a la narradora a su época de estudiante de Bellas Artes, cuando todavía soñaba con ser pintora, sino que le hace revivir la torrencial historia de amor que vivieron los tres cuando ella apenas tenía veinte años. This is a tale of a time and a place, of Madrid in the 1980's, where the dullness of a dictatorship gave way to an explosion of life and color, and everything seemed possible. Years later María recalls a three-sided, excessive and doomed passion with the bitter emotion of what has become irretrievable.

Avg Rating

3.87

Number of Ratings

3,221

5 STARS

28%

4 STARS

39%

3 STARS

26%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Almudena Grandes

Author · 20 books

She studied Geography and History at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She was married to the poet Luis García Montero. In 1989 she won the La Sonrisa Vertical prize with her erotic novel Las edades de Lulú, which has been translated into several languages. Bigas Luna made a movie based on this book, as did Gerardo Herrero with Malena es un nombre de tango and Juan Vicente Córdoba with El lenguaje de los balcones in his film Aunque tú no lo sepas. As Emilie L. Bergmann said, her novel Las edades de Lulú (1989) "represented a breakthrough for eroticism in women's writing". Her books speak about the Spanish people in the last quarter of the 20th century and the first years of the 21st century. She shows in them a great realism and an intense psychological introspection.