Only Smoke

In this disappointing metafictional fable from Millas (Let No One Sleep), a son inherits more than he bargained for from his absent father. After Carlos’s father dies in a motorcycle accident, he’s surprised to be given the keys to his dad’s book-filled Madrid apartment. There, he finds a disturbing autobiographical story his father had written just before his death, as well as an edition of Grimms’ Fairy Tales. While reading the collection, Carlos discovers he’s somehow entered the stories, and he watches them unfold before he realizes that he can alter the action. When not immersed in the fairy tales, he pursues a career in risk management and begins a relationship with his neighbor, a middle-aged woman who may have been his father’s lover. The narrative harps somewhat heavy-handedly on the blurred boundaries between reality and fiction: “In stories... the extraordinary and the ordinary merge like the materials of an alloy in which it then becomes impossible to separate the original constituent parts.” Millas creates a sense of genuine eeriness, but the conceit doesn’t feel particularly fresh. This lacks the magic of the author’s previous work. (May)