Wonderful World

by Calvo, Javier

• ISBN13: 9780061557682
• ISBN10: 0061557684
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

Calvo brings together a cast of intriguing characters in a haunting and masterful tale full of scandalous behavior and dangerous crimes, in his English-language debut novel.

Excerpts

Wonderful World
A Novel

Chapter One

The Attack of the Low-Flying Airplanes

"Twenty-three days till the world release of Stephen King's new novel," says twelve-year-old Valentina Parini, lying in her hammock in the courtyard of the former ducal palace in Barcelona's Old Quarter, a building the tour guides call the Palau de la Mar Fosca, the Palace of the Stormy Sea. With a plaid blanket over her legs. She is holding up the promotional brochure for Stephen King's new novel so that Lucas Giraut can see it. "Or, to be more precise, twenty-three days and six hours."

Rays of late-afternoon sun fall on the balconies of the Old Quarter like the remains of a space shuttle that has disintegrated in the stratosphere. Valentina Parini, a troubled student in the seventh grade at Barcelona's Italian Academy and self-proclaimed Top European Expert on the Work of Stephen King, sways in her hammock with a pensive expression on her face. For a couple of weeks now, every time she looks at something, one of her eyes seems to stray slightly toward the edge of her visual field. Giraut takes the promotional brochure for Stephen King's new novel without getting up from his white plastic garden chair. The skyline from the edge of the yard shows one tower of the cathedral covered in scaffolding and a flock of seagulls that soar in voracious circles around some invisible prey.

Valentina Parini lives with her mother in an apartment on the first floor of the former ducal place. Lucas Giraut lives in the apartment on the second floor. The courtyard, the marble staircase and the parking area on the lower level are common space for all residents.

"My school psychologist told me I'm not allowed to read Stephen King's new novel," continues Valentina Parini. Her skinny preteen body, with its excessively long arms and legs, contrasts with her round face and tiny features that make you think of tropical tree-dwelling monkeys. Her nose is so small that the fact that it can sustain her child-sized eyeglasses, with their green plastic frames, strikes Giraut as a true gravitational feat. "Says that reading it could be very negative for me. She sent a note to my teacher and to my mom." The lips of her tiny mouth purse in a disgusted expression. "She even told my basketball coach. What a huge bitch."

Seated on his garden chair, Lucas Giraut, thirty-three years of age, pulls a cigarette out of the silver case embossed with the initials LG that he always carries in the inside pocket of his suit. His suit today is a charcoal gray Lino Rossi with red pinstripes. As he lights the cigarette he furrows his vaguely namby-pamby eyes and his pale, thin eyebrows. Valentina Parini's school psychologist is one of the most frequent topics of conversation at the afternoon meetings Valentina and Giraut hold in the backyard of the ducal palace. Valentina's clinical relationship with the school psychologist dates back to the episode known at her school as the Spanish Class Mishap.

"It's called Wonderful World," says Valentina. Pointing with her head at the promotional brochure for Stephen King's new novel that Giraut has in his hands. "It's the story of a man that wakes up one day and discovers that everything around him has turned perfect. The neighbors that used to hate him now give him baseball tickets. His coworkers are friendly to him. His ex-wife, too. Everything has turned perfect. The world starts functioning flawlessly. Wars end. Politicians turn smart. Which means something's going on." She's not trying to sound mysterious or showing any traces of preteen excitement. She's just using the natural, confident tone of someone who knows she's the Top European Expert on the Work of Stephen King. "Something alien. Something that is controlling people's minds."

"When I was your age, I wrote a novel, too." Lucas Giraut looks at the promotional brochure under the courtyard's late-afternoon light. On the cover of the pamphlet it says "Wonderful World, by Stephen King" and "Worldwide Release December 22." Giraut takes a thoughtful drag on his cigarette. "It wasn't a novel like yours, or like Stephen King's. Really, it wasn't exactly a novel. It was about Apartment Thirteen. I don't know why it's called that. In my family they've always called it that. It's a room in the floor above the place where I work. My father used to go there to hide from my mother, I think. Anyway, I was obsessed with Apartment Thirteen. I dreamed about that place night after night. In my dreams it was much bigger than it really is. It had antique lamps and rooms filled with antiques. And endless hallways." He looks up toward the Palau de la Mar Fosca. "I still have that novel in my files. I remember that it filled a lot of notebooks. That's how I spent all my time as a kid. Filling notebooks. With drawings and things I wrote. And in the notebooks I have all sorts of drawings of Apartment Thirteen. I mean, the way I imagined it then. Which is nothing like how it really is. I didn't actually get to see it until after my father died. And it turned out to be just a small, windowless room. Because of my father's illness, you remember. The problem he had with windows."

Marcia Parini's voice is heard, slightly occluded by the smoke extractor, as it comes from the window of the kitchen of the lower level of the house.

"Lucas? Is she bothering you?" she asks in a distracted tone of voice. Above the double acoustic cushion created by the smoke extractor and the spluttering of the crêpes on the grill. "Would you like a crêpe?"

Wonderful World
A Novel. Copyright © by Javier Calvo . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from Wonderful World by Javier Calvo
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