On its release in
Spain, Laura and Julio rapidly ran up sales of over 150,000 copies, which left
no one surprised. Juan Jose Millas is one of Spain’s most loved and respected
authors, who appeals to a broad spectrum of readers and at a multitude of
levels.
When their friend and
neighbour Manuel is left an in coma after a car accident, Julio, a film set
designer, and his wife, Laura, a masseuse in an urban spa, begin to journey down
strange ways. The fact that they live in an apartment that is a mirror image of
their neighbours has something to do with it, as does the fact that Julio
become attracted to the land of shadows,
a world that he first created to entertain a child but which then he develops
for himself. Meanwhile, Laura enters into a strange correspondence of her own
that lacks any recipient.
Laura and Julio looks at the eternal triangle
once again, although in this case the third party never makes an appearance. A self-proclaimed
genius, his presence is so strongly felt that it undermines the existential
essence of the married couple as they separately attempt to assimilate what he
means to each of them.
Millas has firmly
rooted this comic and painful novel in his on-going investigation of the human
individual, always in search of the panacea that will cure all its fears and
discomforts, torn between submerging itself into a partnership or struggling
free from one as a newly fledged personality, and all the time lost in a world
of illusions and delusions.