The Low Voices is a novel about life, it is life itself telling stories, it is t
he memory of the quiet voices of the people I got to know. The Low Voices draws
on a patchwork of memories from Rivas's early life under Franco. There's Rivas's
beloved elder sister, Maria, who died young; his mother, the verbivore; his fat
her, a construction worker with vertigo; and a supporting cast of local priests,
chatty hairdressers, monstrous carnival effigies, wolf hunters, and a baritone
cockerel.
The book is full of personal stories such as his first fight, using
suitcases for school chairs (a reminder of the grinding poverty that forced man
y to leave Galicia), and his burgeoning career in journalism, against a backgrou
nd of the unspoken dread of the Spanish Civil War at home, and the wider world a
s Coca-Cola sets up a factory nearby and news comes in of men landing on the moo
n.
