The latest addition to my website is Almudena Grandes‘ Los aires difíciles (The Wind from the East). Juan Olmero, a successful, unmarried orthopedic surgeon is moving from Madrid, with his his ten year old niece, Tamara, and his mentally handicapped brother, Alfonso to Jerez. Tamara’s parents have both died as the result of a car crash. We gradually learn that Juan has something of a past which is a key theme of the novel. Opposite the Olmeros is Sara Gómez, also unmarried, also from Madrid and also with something of a past, another key theme of the book. Can these two redeem themselves and their past by taking care of Tamara and Alfonso, as well as of their joint cleaner, Maribel and her son Andrés? And will the past come back to haunt them? Grandes tells a superb tale with a difficult moral conundrum.