"Writing is searching, someone once told me," says one of Lacuesta's protagonists. "You search for something and you don't know what it is until you've found it." What these stories have in common is the questions which they raise and do not answer, and the aloneness of their protagonists. Loneliness, lovelessness, impermanence, death, lie in their heart. ...Life Before X is an exceptional first book, one which raises expectations for the next one, and the next. from the Introduction, by Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo