“Can the failures of a generation be encrypted in a crumbling relationship? Apuntes para una despedida rescues the best of the intimate narrative tradition in a profound and accurate novel. Javier Serena turns the conclusion into an art form.”

“Javier Serena has written a novel that is at once incisive and endearing. On the surface, it appears to be about a drifting couple; below the surface lies a topic that is even more cruel: the painful silence that follows the collapse of expectations.”

“An intimate novel that has a whiff of the nouvelle vague, in which we are offered a glimpse into the bubble of a post-young couple at the cusp of throwing their dreams away, who talk and talk and drink beer in the mornings, trying to convince themselves and each other that yes, it’s still worth it. We see and hear them talk in the Madrid night, guessing in the silent fabric of nighttime and in a city that seems to want to elude them. (...) Apuntes para una despedida is about the strange alliances that we humans sometimes build to try to save ourselves, and about the ideals, dreams, and fragility of artistic professions.”

“Apuntes para una despedida is, above all, a melancholic and incisive study of falling out of love and the search for meaning. Javier Serena, far from clichéx and dominating the genre of the short novel exceptionally well, confronts us with the final days of an inevitable break.”