Nocilla Dream

Nocilla Dream (2015) by Agustín Fernández Mallo – Fitzcarraldo Editions – ISBN 9781910695029 – Condition: Very Good

There are novels with plots, novels without much plot, and then there are novels that appear to have looked at the whole idea of plot, nodded politely, and wandered off to inspect a desert road, a piece of technology, a lonely motel and several unrelated people instead.

Agustín Fernández Mallo’s Nocilla Dream, published in English by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2015, is very much one of those.

Part novel, part collage, part philosophical scrapbook and part literary channel-surfing exercise, Nocilla Dream moves through fragments, characters, places, ideas, quotations and strange little observations with the restless curiosity of somebody who has been given access to the entire modern world and absolutely no instruction to stay on one subject.

The book jumps across landscapes and lives, often connecting people and ideas in unexpected ways. There are deserts, roads, anonymous spaces, contemporary technology, science, pop culture, art, isolation and the peculiar experience of being alive in a world where everything appears to be connected to everything else, but nobody is entirely sure what any of it means.

In other words, it is perhaps the ideal novel for the internet age, except that it has had the good manners to become a book.

Fernández Mallo became associated with the so-called Nocilla Generation in Spanish literature, a loose grouping of writers interested in fragmentary structures, contemporary culture, media, technology and new ways of constructing fiction. This is therefore not a traditional beginning-middle-end affair in which a man inherits a house, encounters a mystery and eventually discovers that the gardener did it.

Instead, the reader is invited to assemble meanings from apparently disconnected pieces.

Sometimes the connections are obvious. Sometimes they are faint. Sometimes you may suspect there is a connection simply because modern literature has trained you to become suspicious of coincidences.

That is part of the fun.

The style is experimental without necessarily being hostile, intellectual without requiring you to wear black and smoke outside a university philosophy department, and full of the sort of unexpected juxtapositions that make ordinary things briefly seem very strange.

There is also something rather appropriate about owning this Fitzcarraldo edition physically. The publisher is known for producing distinctive literary books with an almost aggressively tasteful appearance, meaning that even if you temporarily lose track of what is happening inside, the book will continue looking extremely intelligent on the shelf.

This copy is in Very Good condition, so unlike some of the fragmented lives and landscapes contained within, it has remained admirably well organised.

Ideal for readers of experimental fiction, contemporary European literature, literary collage, postmodern writing, unconventional narratives, or anyone who has ever opened seventeen browser tabs, forgotten why, and thought the resulting experience might make an interesting novel.

Another slightly bewildering but very respectable survivor from Crappy Old Books — perfect for readers who believe a novel does not necessarily need to tell one story when it can tell twenty-seven fragments, three theories, two deserts and something involving a road instead.

Keep browsing: See more Fiction books Other books by Agustin Fernandez Mallo