Almost Never by Daniel Sada

Daniel Sada is a giant amongst Mexican authors.  He is a writer's writer, and those of us who read him in English are apparently missing his best qualities (which I suspect would be true about reading David Foster Wallace in translation--the brilliance in his use of words and the melodies that he creates would be a real challenge for a translator to manage, and those are the sorts of things that Sada is known for).  He died before this was published, and I think it is a pleasant afternoon read that is well worth picking up.

This is a salacious, almost tongue-in-cheek, story about sexual obsession that well might appeal to any sentient human being with a few nerve ends and a beating heart. Demetrio, a young agronomist in Oaxaca — it is 1945, in a vibrant metropolis of Mexico — falls in love with a beautiful and inexhaustibly athletic prostitute by the name of Mireya. He is gleefully enjoying her countless charms, visiting her so often that she has no time for other customers, when his mother writes and insists that Demetrio accompany her to a wedding in the desert town of Coahuila. At the wedding, he meets the virginal Renata, whose beauty is so arresting that he cannot help but propose marriage. Although Renata accepts, she is not so easily won. There is to be no touching, she tells him, and certainly no conjugating. Not even a whisper of love, for at least a year. But Demetrio is full of vim and vigor — this is post-World War Mexico, after all, and the country is bursting with possibility. So it’s back to Mireya. And then forth to Renata. And then back, forth, back. You get the picture. It is a quick read that gives many cultural insights alongside the eternal struggles between men and women.