First published to great acclaim in Spanish in 2008, Almost Never is a story of futile longing, of maddening distances, of insufferable boredom, of gratification delayed just a little too long. In other words, Almost Never is a story that almost never gets to the point--of course, that is the point. Daniel Sada, who died in November 2011 (hours after receiving Mexico's National Prize for Arts and Sciences in Literature), was known for writing in an unusual, distinctive metric that played with rhythm and syntax. Here, the effect subtly delays every thought and movement of its characters--mirroring the protracted plot.
It is Oaxaca, 1946, and Demetrio Sordo is a semi-successful agronomist torn between consuming infatuations with two women in opposite ends of Mexico and on opposite ends of the virgin/whore dichotomy. But this is no love story. Money and sex are Demetrio's primary motivations--mostly sex: "Sex, as an apt pretext for breaking the monotony; motor sex; anxiety-sex; the habit of sex, as any glut that can well become a burden; colossal, headlong, frenzied, ambiguous sex, as a game that baffles then enlightens then baffles again; pretense sex, see-through-sex."
And that's just the book's opening passage; the story ends with sex, too--its final words are "Sheer relief." Relief, indeed. Deliberately tedious yet weirdly captivating, Sada's writing is a marvel. It's this--not Demetrio or his many dilemmas--that makes Almost Never a remarkable (and funny, and exasperating) novel.--Hannah Calkins