A long, complicated family saga, narrated in the first person by a woman born (like the author) in 1960, but with a lot of back-story set during the Civil War and reaching back further to colonial Peru and the Conquistadors. The central theme seems to be the way bourgeois Spanish society lays down role-models of "good" and "bad" behaviour, especially for women, and the way real people fail to fit into those role-models. And of course the trouble with that is that you risk setting up an equally-coarse set of clichés in the other direction, in which all the "domestic angels" turn out to be cynical, manipulating, selfish hypocrites and all the "whores" turn out to be open, generous and honest. Grandes doesn't quite do that, but she comes perilously close. What's more, she fails to avoid the many easy plot-temptations offered by a storyline that involves two pairs of twin sisters. So, not a very satisfying book, but it is good as an immersive, long (beach-)read, with lots of good dialogue, steamy sex-scenes, and long Madrid bar-crawls (and their attendant hangovers). ( )

What a book, what a life.
Now I've finished reading, it feels like a huge weight has been lifted from me. I'm glad I'm done, I didn't particularly like the book, missed half of the complicated family realations, despite my reading pace was slow.
I don't think I'll pick up a book from this author again, unless it has a completely different subject. ( )

The use of overly large sentences in sentences makes this book difficult to read (especially for non native speaking persons). Also the use of time lapses both forward and backward brings nothing to the story. ( )