Description: A Chilean writer named Julio and his wife Gloria are beset by worries, constantly bickering about money, their writing, and their son (who may or may not be plying the oldest trade in Marrakesh). When Julio's boyhood best friend, now a famous artist, lends the couple his luxurious Madrid apartment for the summer, it is an escape for both -- in particular for Julio, who fantasizes about the garden next door and the erotic life of the lovely young aristocrat who inhabits it. But Julio's life and career unravel in Madrid: he is rebuffed by a famous literary agent, who detests him and his novel; his son's friend from Marrakesh moves in and causes havoc; and Gloria begins to drink. In the face of pitiless adversity, Julio's talent inexorably begins to fade. With The Garden Next Door, Jose Donoso has rendered a carefully crafted and bitterly comic meditation on gardens, deceit, and the nature of a writer's muse.
Review Quotes:
Praise for Joséeacute; Donoso
"José Donoso is my favorite author of the Latin American boom (better than Gabriel Garcia Máaacute;rquez)."―Fernanda Melchor
"Donoso, as I have long believed, belongs to that small company of storytellers who write not for a region but for the entire world: a gigantic masterpiece."―Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
"Donoso must be counted as one of the spinal writers of the extraordinary boom in Latin-American fiction which spread through the reading world from the mid-sixties on."―Alastair Reed, The New Yorker
"Donoso is one of the most important contemporary Spanish-language writers."―Mario Vargas Llosa