It's Sylvia's sixteenth birthday and her life as an adult is about to begin - not with the party she had been planning, but with a car accident that leaves her leg broken. Behind the wheel is a talented young soccer player, just arrived from Buenos Aires, and set for stardom on and off the field. As their destinies collide and a love affair is set into motion, across town, Sylvia's father and grandfather are finding their own lives suddenly derailed by a violent murder and a secret affair. Set against the maze of Madrid's congested and contested streets, Learning to Lose follows these four individuals as they swerve off course in unexpected directions, searching for a way to avoid or accept their losses. Each of them is dodging guilt and the fear of failure, but their united search for happiness, love, purity, and, above all, a way to survive, forms a taut narrative web that binds the characters together, and holds the reader. David Trueba's razor-sharp insight into the intricacies of lives overturned by disappointment is reminiscent of the truthfulness of cinema verite. Our four protagonists collide under dramatic and cinematic circumstances, but they err in ways that seem all too familiar.
Through dark humor, vivacious prose, and a blazing honesty, oppression becomes delightfully appealing. Learning to Lose is a clear and gripping window onto modern life, with its great highs and rock-bottom lows.
