Manolito Gafotas

Recommended but with lots of caveats ...

First off, this is a contemporary Spanish classic and a big deal in Spain, or at least it was. It won award(s?) and, if I remember correctly, had three movies and a TV series spun off from it.

It's also very hard to like. Manolito is a reminder that children, though adorable, are sometimes little more than free range psychopaths, churning out cruelties everywhere they go.

If you get to the end of the first chapter (each chapter is a seperate tale told in first person by Manolito) and can't take it anymore, I suggest jumping to La Paz Mundial. It was very funny and a reminder of the indignaties and cruelties that kids are forced into daily and the petty tragedies that befall them even in victory. This was also the chapter where he becomes likeable and the next(?) and final chapter is both very funny and quite touching. Better late then never!

Language is a bear, certainly the hardest I've dealt with in my limited reading. Lordy, the slang! But worse the nonsense phrases! Oy! If I were one to look up every word I didn't know or check every time a word was used in a way I didn't expect it I would never have made it through. But, for as rough as it was, it was a good reminder of the necessity for me to step into the modern world and meet the language where it is now, or at least where it was in the 90s, ... in Madrid, ... spoken by little kids ...