The task explored in the novel The Last Function centers on telling stories drawn from everyday life on the fringe, conveyed in a voice that is at once delicate, observant, and vividly expressive. It draws a clear distinction between what is real and what is imagined, a line that the book has already traced with precision in a prior work from the late eighties, a predecessor that shares many echoes with the present narrative. In both works, the tension between reality and appearance drives the storytelling, revolving around the figure known as Tito. It is the story told by a voice remembered within a circle of retirees in a town described as abandoned and nearly erased from memory. The intertwining arcs also bring in the figure of Paula, a young woman whose life seems constrained by a job she finds unsatisfying and a marriage that feels increasingly ridiculous, as if life itself is slipping through her fingers while she tries to sustain it with hollow routines.
The author repeatedly follows parallel threads—Tito and Paula—with a steady, almost ritualistic focus. As the pages turn, the narrative framework loosens, like a curtain drawn aside to reveal a stage that represents the world’s grand theater. The town becomes a central axis, a fulcrum around which Tito’s past and Paula’s present revolve. Years later, Tito returns to the same place to assume a family duty and, in doing so, steps into a role that resembles his own father. He continues the reprise of a show titled The Miracle and Apotheosis of the Holy Daughter Rosalba, a medieval legend that has long stood as a source of local pride. Tito and the townspeople themselves emerge as a hazy but legible symbol of a once-great, now vanished era. Paula, meanwhile, becomes the focal point of the envisioned play, embodying a character who can be known by more than one name, a reflection of how fiction and life blur when roles shift in the storytelling.
The narrative then casts the magician’s craft as a force that folds the reader into a dreamlike atmosphere, where what is spoken translates into a fairy-tale texture. The book presents a chorus of stories, each unique yet converging on the same core history: a brave but ultimately fragile effort, a dream that may withstand the test of time—or be undone by a stark, cruel reality. The text treats dreamlike moments as a vivid, sometimes singular instance of a life that could be heroic, pitiful, or merely human, all while dreams often prove more truthful than the daily world itself. At the heart of this literary experiment lies the immense breadth of time that casts its shadow over both the town and its inhabitants. The narrative’s last act shines as a dazzling mirage, inviting readers to participate in an astonishing tale that feels almost like a private theater inside the ordinary lives of its characters. Within that mirage, a case of a futile enterprise is recounted, a dream that rises to a moment of glory before meeting the stark, brutal cadence of reality.