The Low Voices

Beautiful… It resonates with memory, love and palpable grief… Rivas is special – funny, benign, opinionated. He tells wonderful stories because he learned early in life how to listen, and he listened to the soft, wise voices around him. Rivas misses nothing, and it is fascinating to see how, in The Low Voices, he does not tell us how he became a writer but shows us the people, such as his quiet, unassuming, determined mother, who helped make him one—Eileen Battersby, Irish Times, Books of the YearOne of Spain's best-known novelists… Rivas's imagery sparkles like dew in the morning sun—Michael Eaude, Literary ReviewRivas has an appealing lyrical style, an offbeat humour and a translator well attuned to both.—Times Literary SupplementThe nature of this book means it can be enjoyed as a single straight story or as individual chapters. It’s one to leave by the bedside, to dip into every now and then, and enjoy over and over. Something, I think, I’ll be doing a lot.—Jim Dempsey, BookmunchAn affecting, impressionistic novel-cum-memoir. Like all great autobiographical writing, it pulls the magic trick of making the specific and personal universally appealing.—Juanita Coulson, Lady