Fina Casalderrey

Francisco S nchez Loiro, "Moni" to his friends, is having problems at school. The teachers find him aggressive, and he keeps being called into the director's office. He is studying Hostelry and Tourism and has had to repeat the second year of vocational training. It's not that he's not talented, he just can't be bothered to apply himself. He also likes to swear a lot. The only time he feels well is when he is with his best friend, Tito, or with his podencos, the warren hounds Tito and he breed. His dream is to have one of his dogs recognized by the Andalusian Podenco Club. It is six years since his mother died of breast cancer, and the family unit - his father; his older sister, Marianxo - has suffered as a result. The question is, will he go off the rails, become a drug addict like so many of those around him, or will he manage to keep his dignity intact, to control his temper? Life is a role-playing game, filled with obstacles and opportunities. The important thing is to focus our energies on the right objective.Fina Casalderrey is one of Galicia's most successful writers. She has been Spain's candidate for both the Hans Christian Andersen and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Awards. This is her fifth title in English.

In this collection, Fina Casalderrey regales us with five stories written in the starry firmament of night. In the title story, a woman moves with her husband to a house in the village, where she plans to give birth, and is approached by a gardener who offers to tend the garden at night. In "Appointment in the Gardens of the South", a descendant of Galician emigrants to Argentina is drawn to a bronze statue whose face he cannot make out, which leads him to dig into his memory. In "Gusts of Mist", a woman walks the Northern Way to Santiago de Compostela in pursuit of happiness. In "Residence Zero", an artist moves to a new housing development in search of space, but finds it unsettling. In "An Ice Cream for Life", a man is shocked to discover that he has no heart. This book is reminiscent of another classic of Galician literature, When There's a Knock on the Door at Night, also available from Small Stations Press. Fina Casalderrey is one of Galicia's best-known writers of young people's literature. She is a winner of the Spanish National Book Award and Spain's candidate for the Hans Christian Andersen Award (the "Nobel Prize" for children's literature). Two of her novels have already appeared in English: Dove and Cut Throat and Just Imagine, Merche