En Juan Jose Millás ingenuity is discovered from the title of each new book. On this occasion, "Life at times" seems to refer us to the fragmentation of our time, to the changes of scenery between happiness and sadness, to the memories that make up that film that we can see on our last day. Different considerations that already invite you to read to discover what it is about.
And the truth is that in that notion that borders between surrealism and estrangement, Millás manifests himself in this book as a teacher who takes us naturally, from the everyday, through the underground tunnels of our reality. As soon as we begin to read, we discover Millás himself walking between the pages of this novel with his vital blog cadence. And almost everything narrated sounds to us, it is a similar tune to that of our lives, to that of any life. The disguise of routine homogenizes our behaviors, our way of coping with circumstances and of interrelating them. And then there are the shrillnesses, the critical moments that make us reposition ourselves on a plane other than the median, without knowing how to react, without guidelines or references. Life surprises more than we can think, our world demands that we go out and expose ourselves, so that we manifest what kind of soul governs us. And Millás is in charge, with the apparent simplicity of a diary, of revealing how much lack of control there is in our supposedly controlled life.
And from there, from the lack of control, from the anarchic impression of living that finally prevails in transcendent moments, the newspaper ends up assaulting us towards the idea of disturbing transformation. Surrealism is partly the shock, the exceptional idea of learning when we think that we have already learned everything. It never hurts to discover in literature that force of the unpredictable that, like a hurricane, is responsible for removing everything, stripping it of meaning, relocating the pieces so that we can re-understand if things are right like this or if they it is a complete nonsense. The only certain thing is that everything depends, as the song would say. You can be surprised or terrified, you can take action, offer yourself to the game or succumb to the melancholy of a new reality with which it is already impossible to connect.
You can now buy the book La vida a unos, the novel or diary of Juan José Millás, here: