The news from Spain: seven variations on a love story - Wickersham, Joan
Summary: A collection of stories that explores the power of love and the impossibility of controlling or understanding it features characters from various times and regions, from Mozart's eighteenth-century collaboration with librettist Da Ponte to a 1940s love triangle. - (Baker & Taylor)
Booklist Reviews
The impish recurrence of a phrase, the news from Spain, links these seven stories, appearing in them in widely varying ways. It is a reminder of their deeper cohesion. Though they jump from eighteenth-century Prague to New York in the 1940s and feature a race-car driver, a teenaged girl, and a middle-aged bride, they make a similar point: love is flawed, uneven, and impossible to pin down. There is love in all forms here—a child for a parent, a wife for a cheating husband or a lover, an aide for his charge—but it never runs smoothly. Wickersham asserts, through a character, that love stories are dreams and invention . . . guesswork. By presenting the blind enthusiasm of a crush and later its disillusionment, the sad realization of loving more or less than a partner, and the distorting pull of differing needs and obligations in a relationship, she demonstrates how biased and baseless narratives of love can be. Characters tell themselves stories of passion or betrayal, and readers see the reality of their frail, imperfect emotional faculties. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
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