[In the following review, Tatum calls the pieces in Baraja de invenciones shocking and gloomy.]

Spain's distinguished “inventor” prefaces this collection [Baraja de invenciones] with a brief, but striking Autobiografía in which he says: “Me considero el más importante novelista español desde el 98.”

Thirty-three “invenciones” comprise the collection and their impact is often shocking. Old and young Celaesque types, principally Spanish, stalk starkly and tragically through the poetry-impregnated pages. They move like peasants plodding before their oxen along the roads and through the villages of Spain. Or like earlier Cela madrileños, hurrying to their swarming or lonely pisos, bending against the winter wind from the Guadarramas. Closely identified with these people are the animals which serve them and the violent, but unforgettable Spanish landscape that surrounds them. Death and the cemetery often hover near.