Attila

The devastating latest from Serena (Last Days on Earth) centers on an uncompromising 40-something Catalan writer named Alioscha (a thinly veiled Aliocha Coll) in his final years. Alioscha and his painter wife, Élene, leave Barcelona for Paris, where Alioscha applies himself with “monastic discipline” to his novel Attila, which is made up of a “long and chaotic discourse of impossible verses and nonsensical paragraphs.” The unnamed narrator, a journalist friend of Alioscha’s, reveals early on that Alioscha will complete Attila just days before his suicide. Gradually, Alioscha’s work consumes him, and he becomes a “stranger among the living,” trapped in his own “asphyxiating labyrinth.” Élene leaves him in the middle of the night, and his wealthy father, who supports him financially and wants him to return to Spain, cuts him off. To make ends meet, Alioscha collects garbage and works at a nursing home on the outskirts of the city. As he descends further into squalor and madness, his cousin Carlos and the narrator travel regularly from Spain to Paris to offer him company and, they hope, salvation. This clear-eyed portrait sheds welcome light on Coll and his challenging masterpiece. It’s a gut-wrenching reckoning with the pain and glory of making art. (Apr.)