X IS WHERE I AM

A young Spanish woman confronts the loss of her mother to cancer and the loss of a lover in this memoir-like novel.

In the opening pages of this meditation on loss, the narrator—named Sara, like the author—is at a hotel rendezvous in Barcelona with the lover she calls “Girl” while her mother is dying in Asturias, where Sara plans to fly the next day. Her mother has lived with metastasized breast cancer for 10 years, Sara’s entire adult life, and Sara’s account of their time together in her mother’s last days is both tender and harrowing. Meanwhile, her affair with Girl is brief and intense, beginning in October, a few weeks after Sara moves to Barcelona from London, where her partner, Dani, remains, and ending in December, in the days between her mother’s death and Dani’s arrival in Barcelona. The affair ends because, once Dani is in town, Girl does not want to continue it; though she tries, Girl does not, like Sara, understand nonmonogamy: “that there can be different connections with different loves.” Sara is an academic (the move to Barcelona is for a teaching job), and her narrative style is often like that of an essayist; she makes observations such as, “The absence of bodies we’ve had passionate connections with is disconcerting,” before reflecting on Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of “susto,” or “frightening of the spirit.” Baudelaire, Jeanette Winterson, and Woolf are among other writers cited as Sara sifts through her feelings. At the same time, bodies are very much present on the page, including intimate depictions of lovemaking and an unflinching, anguished, and moving portrayal of the ravages of cancer and its treatment on her mother’s body.

This book is for readers seeking cerebral pleasures rather than drama.