In this novel by Luis Landero, there is a moment when light fills the room where the narrator works at home in Olavide, Madrid. It feels as if that glow travels from Alburquerque in Extremadura, Landero’s birthplace, sixty years earlier, and settles into the present moment to remind him of a simpler happiness. The author can still be the joyful child from his early days, living under the same Extremaduran light and breathing the familiar air of his hometown—even while his life unfolds in the big city that now shapes his art.
With this glow, Landero crafted a bright and hopeful novel titled The Last Function. The book opens as a vivid fiction, almost a whispered memory that refuses to fade. Landero is also the mind behind Late Age Plays, which premiered at Tusquets in 1990, and since then his prose has continued to grow in confidence. He remains an adult who never abandons the playful spark of his recurring childhoods.
The narrative also surveys the narrator’s years of childhood, youth, and maturity, tracing the arc of a friend who becomes a musician, an administrative manager, and eventually the central figure in this literary achievement.
“Childhood ends when fear arises”
From the very title, the book signals an ending already in sight: The Last Function.
Finding the exact title was challenging, with friends providing ideas. One suggested a title inspired by his mother, arguing that the book should be called The Last Function. The novel places theater at its heart, dividing the action into two acts, and it is not by accident that the dizzying appeal of the stage captivate Ernesto Gil, a childhood friend who plays the lead role in the story. His admiration for the poet Garcia Lorca grows as the narrator accompanies him on journeys that take them to New York, Bordeaux, and Morocco.
From that inspiration the story itself began to take shape. Yet the core of the novel lies not in a single real-life incident but in the devotion to theater and poetry that gives the work its meaning. As Fernando Fernán Gómez put it, the hero seeks to be an artist, not merely to achieve success. In the author’s own time, people wanted to become actors and make a living from art while continuing to work. Today’s actors often strive for fame right from the start.
The cover’s luggage and the 1960s car hint at a journey, and indeed the book is a journey that moves through places, memories, and ideas.
There is a sense that the narrative was conceived with intention before the writing began. The two stories that later fuse together are distinct: Tito’s tale, the old story in the narrator’s head about a performer who cannot make it in the big city, and the entirely fictional story of a woman who boards the wrong train. They converge in the end, creating a more cohesive world as the pages turn. The author never forgets what he has written, allowing the two threads to come together gradually as the novel progresses toward its closing moments and the reader recognizes a converging whole whenever it matters most.
Writers are asked which verses make them envious. The author singles out Cervantes for his simplicity and creative spontaneity, Valle Inclán for evocative power, Borges for concise, thought-provoking prose infused with irony, García Márquez for the ability to surprise, Alejo Carpentier for perfection, Pío Baroja for its unpolished moodiness, and Miguel de Unamuno for depth. Each writer represents a distinct voice, a way of looking at the world that is inseparable from the author’s own character and soul. The speaker confesses a wish to write like all of them at once.
Was The Last Function planned in advance, or did the story emerge as the narrator wrote? It was the former. The novel’s structure was clear from the start. For example, a theater show was envisioned in the town with Tito directing and Paula participating; one love story failed as did another, yet love and art together rescue the two protagonists from a life that feels routine. Culture and art function as salvation, offering a path beyond banality.
At times the events in the book feel almost autobiographical. Paula is a fully fictional character, yet Tito and his father are drawn from real life. The town and its landscapes—an old castle, familiar people gathering for a medieval pageant—provide the stage for scenes that echo personal memories from Extremadura. Everything born from experience fuels the novel, becoming the ignition that lights a living, breathing fiction. And then the author writes, sentence by sentence, turning those raw materials into a finished work.
Two separate beginnings eventually meet years later. The narrators are not Landero himself but a chorus that guides the story, much like a symphony of lifelong tales. The pacing is precise, like the careful craft of a detective novel, where every line and rhythm is measured to prevent waste and to maintain a conversational, musical tone. It can feel spontaneous, but the craftsmanship is deliberate and exacting.
In some sections the world seems well made, in others merely adequate, with happiness riding the wave of both ups and downs. The childhood Landero describes might have been even brighter if not for the shadow of his father, a dark force who believed life would truly begin only when one achieved greatness. Yet, aside from that melancholic note, the narrator recalls a life filled with joy—especially the early years in the countryside and town—where constant inspiration kept hope alive and made fear purely a future problem that must be faced with effort and endurance.
There is a sense that the book could attract everyone’s affection. One colleague even predicted that no reader would resist loving it. The author remembers the powerful thrill of discovering literature in youth, the moment when Kafka, García Márquez, Borges, and Valle-Inclán revealed the magic of books. The feeling of falling in love with a book becomes a lasting gift, something that stays with a person for life. The deepest compliment a writer can receive is to be told that someone has fallen in love with their book.