I have never read such lovely and perfect stories in all my life. And I would never, ever call myself a short story reader (I might say that Alice Munro is my only exception, but I don’t even really read her). I was not expecting to love The News from Spain so much, but since I finished it I have thought back to it a zillion times. Her writing is…well…amazing. At one point I thought “Oh, I’ll just write this bit down that I like.” I’m not someone who usually writes bits down. And the ‘bit’ that I liked ended up being darn near the whole story. What I like about this book, what makes it better/easier than a book of short stories, is that each story is loosely bound to the others. Not in the sense that characters reoccur, or places or events, but in that each story involves the news from Spain. That phrase works its way into each story – boldly, slyly, seamlessly – and has good reason to be the title of each. It’s mostly perfect.