The low voices

The Low Voicesis 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 Voicesdraws on a patchwork of memories from Rivas's early life under Franco. There's Rivas's beloved elder sister, Mária, who died young; his mother, the verbivore; his father, a construction worker with vertigo; 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.