The Wind From the East
by Almudena Grandes, translated by Sonia Soto
538pp, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £12.99
After The Shadow of the Wind, a second hulking Spanish bestseller with "wind" in the title may well confuse our insular little nation's summer readership. And wind is indeed the word. So dominant is the motif in The Wind From the East that the vicious, capricious saucepot of a coastal current is treated as a character in itself, and begins creaking into action whenever it is momentarily neglected.
Two former Madrid residents settle in a small Andalusian housing development by the sea. As they arrive, that nipping and eager air is rocking the awnings and slamming the shutters with a suitably demonic force. Sara Gómez is a wealthy, childless, middle-aged woman with a secret past. Juan Olmedo is a mature and ruminative doctor with an even more secret past. The two fetch up opposite each other with only that minxy miss, the howling gale, between them. Soon, one suspects, they will be battered by its elemental power and stripped of defences. "It's the east wind," characters are given to saying with artless prophecy.
Juan is accompanied by his mentally retarded brother Alfonso and his niece Tamara. He's his niece's guardian, and therein lies a tale. Tamara's father was Juan's brother Damián. And Tamara's mother was a glorious man-tormenter called Charo with elongated limbs and a blow-hot, blow-cold nature. Rather like ... the interesting coastal weather conditions. Hell, Juan tells himself, "has legs, two long legs that leave their taut, sinuous, luxuriant imprint on the retinas of the condemned". Abjectly infatuated, he'd been sleeping with his sister-in-law for a decade when she died with a new suitor in a car crash. Not long after that, Damián told Juan in the middle of a steaming brotherly row that he knew all about this illicit trysting, and then fell backwards, taking a step into air instead of on to a stair. A sickening crunch, and Juan's life, not to mention Damián's, would never be the same again.
Charo is revealed to have been the teenage Juan's object of adoration before Damián stole her away. After Damián's death in these mysterious and possibly criminal circumstances, Juan starts anew by taking the apparently orphaned Tamara to a fresh life of stiff breezes. However, Tamara may not be quite who she is supposed to be either.
The personal history of neighbour Sara, meanwhile, is unravelling at a leisurely pace. The victim of problematic family circumstances in girlhood (prison, poverty, too many kids), Sara was raised by a rich godmother. At 16, she was sent back to live with her down-at-heel blood relatives, a not altogether welcome surprise. Duty, confusion and love of the good life all tangle and conflict. But all is about to change for Sara and the Olmedos.
Almudena Grandes is one of Spain's bestselling authors, and her erotic first novel, The Ages of Lulu, sold more than 1m copies worldwide. The Wind From the East is classy blockbuster material of a sort - a layered saga of family life, rivalry and redemption - but it is not a page-turner as we know it. Its sparsity of dialogue, its ruminative pace and detail are reminiscent of 19th-century prose in its more longwinded guise, and its slow unfolding, albeit studded with high drama, is sporadically frustrating. However, this is an interesting alternative to the homegrown bestseller market. As a study of obsessive passions and climatic conditions, it makes for a sweeping beach read. Especially if there's a snappy little easterly about.
· Joanna Briscoe's novel Sleep with Me is published by Bloomsbury
