“This is all there is.” So says the protagonist of one of the stories in El jardín.

Behind the façade of seemingly run-of-the-mill lives heading nowhere, the characters in this book are forever tunnelling escape routes to somewhere else: a newspaper seller still living in his childhood bedroom makes plans to open his heart to the woman he loves; a security guard spends his time cracking logic puzzles, making him the laughing stock of those around him; an office worker who sleeps out in the open with the wild boars strikes up a romance with a woman as forlorn as him…

Ismael Grasa once again tugs on the reader’s heartstrings with a spare, pared-down prose style that lifts the lid on the lives of the characters who inhabit  these five stories.