La vida breve

La vida breve / A Brief Life

Novel , 1950

Debolsillo

In A Brief Life, Juan Carlos Onetti's protagonist, Brausen, is caring for his wife after a long illness. To compensate for the physical void which temporarily stalls their caresses, Brausen eavesdrops on his neighbors, a husband and wife, imagining their gestures and their expressions. He also imagines stories: of a mythical town called Santa María, and of a doctor named Díaz Grey. But he not only wishes to imagine himself as someone else, he also seeks release from the world he knows. He leads many lives, some real and some fantastic, in order to experience a moment of psychic weightlessness—a 'brief life'.