Performance

«Performance» is a novel about Marisa, a woman just past thirty who seems to live half-asleep: Orphidal and an endless stream of videos on YouTube help her endure the sameness of her days and the exhausting grind of work at an advertising agency. She gets to the office mainly because of the air conditioning in scorching August Madrid. Marisa despises her job—but she cannot bring herself to leave; too strongly do beautiful things draw her in.

On the eve of the corporate team-building event, her anxiety becomes unbearable: spending the weekend side by side with her colleagues seems to her like real torture, and from the depths of memory an old, carefully repressed tragedy rises to the surface. Day by day, the perfectly worn social mask on Marisa’s face becomes cracked—until it finally crumbles, and everything around her begins to fall apart.

«Performance» is a hard, merciless portrait of loneliness, professional burnout, and a desperate need for closeness. A novel about the fragile line between familiar everyday life and the abyss into which it’s so easy to peer on Monday morning—standing right at the edge of the sidewalk.