Un buen chico
A Nice Guy | Mondadori, 2012
And it's true, everybody has a past. But seriously, Polo, no one keeps in their past what you keep.
Polo runs into Blanca, an old friend, on a street in Madrid. What begins as a casual conversation soon results into an extremely painful trip into the past and a horrifying revelation of devastating consequences.
A raw, intense and fascinating story that reveals itself through multiple conversations and recollections, in a perfect clockwork mechanism that engages the reader from the very first page. Violent and lyrical at once, Un buen chico is a rare display of literary ambition and a deeply disturbing read.
«A narrative as subtle as it is dangerous. Impossible to pin down. So harsh that at times it becomes too much to bear. A stunning novel by the Spanish author Javier Gutiérrez, a young unknown who should by all rights be an instant hit.» Femina
«With a spiky, hypnotic prose style, Javier Gutiérrez paints a bleak portrait of the generation of Spaniards who turned 20 in the 1990s.  McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis explored the underbelly of their generation in 80s New York, but this Spain is blacker still». Ariane Singer, Transfuge
«In this, his first novel  to be translated into French, Javier Gutiérrez tells the story of a nice (?) guy in reverse chronological order.» Xavier Houssin, Le Monde Des Livres
«A hypnotic, pulasting work that hovers somewhere between truth and lies, creating an atmosphere of oppression akin to that created by David Lynch in Mulholland Drive.» Patrick Beaumont, Livres - La Gazette du Nord
«Not for the faint of heart. The universe of Zola, by comparison, is the stuff of pulpy romance fiction. Fragments removed from a cocktail shaker, mixed by a novelist who takes pleasure in covering up his tracks. From the height of elegance to a post-modern frenzy.» Jacques Aboucaya, Service Littéraire
«A novel in which the nostalgia for the lost paradise of youth exudes dark feelings.» Rolling Stone Italy
«A fierce novel by a young award-winning Spanish writer.» L'Europea
«An emotionally intense novel with a relentless pace.» Affari Italiani
«Much darker than it seems at first (…) a hypnotic, disquieting descent into the depths of guilt and desire.» Andrea G. Bermejo, El PaÃs
«Violent and lyrical at the same time, a hypnotic and deeply disturbing novel.» Benito Garrido, Culturamas
«A hundred-and-forty-page cliffhanger with an interesting story about the need to free oneself from the past.» E. RodrÃguez Luque, NEO2
«A novel that approaches horror through triviality, and which is more striking for what it does not say than for what it does; a living painting made up of almost overwhelmingly subtle brushstrokes. In Gutiérrez we have a great writer who is trying to reach an audience who traditionally have been aesthetically disregarded: those born in the 1970s.» Guillermo Ortiz, Sigueleyendo.com
Brazil: Record - Verus; France: Autrement; Italy: Neri Pozza