Alicia Giménez Bartlett
Vita sentimentale di un camionista

I don't believe that after reading "Vida sentimental de un camionero" published in Italy (for some reason only in 2004) a full eleven years after the original edition thanks to Sellerio, which deals with recurring and strong themes dear to Alicia Giménez Bartlett such as gender and sexuality discrimination, or those regarding social prejudices that prevent living life according to one's own choices causing social marginalization, even Marcel Proust would claim in this case too that "The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument that he offers to the reader to allow him to discern what, without a book, he might not have seen in himself." or that "Every reader, when reading, reads himself!" and who am I to refute such statements from such a writer?

Strangely, someone on Wikipedia this time made a mistake, writing that this was AGB's debut novel when in reality she had already written at least four, but so be it.

In short, in my small but faithful kindle containing more than 1500 titles downloaded for free here and there over the seasons, there are indeed the famous and award-winning detective/police novels of Alicia, those from the series featuring police inspector Petra Delicado, along with some of her novels like this one "Vita sentimentale di un camionista" (a choice that was random but not too much since I have an older brother who does this job and it piqued my curiosity) which I started reading a few days before leaving and finished here in Morocco in the cool evenings in bed before falling asleep.

I'm not going to tell you the entire plot because you can easily find it everywhere on the web as you well know, (let’s say that to put it in Proust's way not I but rather my brother would have found some way to recognize himself.)

The protagonist is Rafael, a young man in his thirties who transports goods with his truck across Spain, often (and apparently willingly) staying away from his family made up of a young wife whom he no longer loves (and hasn't been loved by for a while) and two little girls who barely remember him.

His passion is sexual encounters with the, let's say, young "females" he meets in the places where he stops to eat (with whom he attempts to have no long-term relationships) as well as those he intentionally meets in pubs or places where many prostitutes "operate", until he meets the beautiful and provocative Tona, an older waitress, who uses him (even sexually) at her will (just as he uses the girls he meets) and with whom he becomes infatuated while concurrently having another relationship (which he is tired of and wants to break off) with Adela, a, um, "girlfriend" who tries to commit suicide over him, failing to get him to divorce his wife, who, having suspicions, files for separation and goes to live with a friend and neighbor giving him the boot.

In the end, Rafael ends up alone, without "girlfriends", left only with the prostitutes he occasionally turns to, without even a house to stay in having left it along with support to his ex-wife, living alone in small apartments or hotels.

To conclude, although the protagonist is male, this novel mainly addresses the female situation (specifically the Spanish one) in its diverse aspects, where the key secondary character is the wife who got married as a teenager being pregnant, then is frustrated in an unhappy marriage where she is systematically ignored by her husband and who finally finds her independence thanks to her best friend, the two women decide to leave their respective spouses and open their own business, that is, a baby shop, this to demonstrate (from the author AGB) that only collaboration between women can lead to independence from male "domination".

In short, the book has a cut where the essentially sex-based events (which are narrated in detail) of the trucker prevail over the sentimental ones as the title suggests, which on his part remain quite latent being him incapable of emotionally bonding with someone and... actually, no, being here in the Maghreb where the woman still has to find a place where she is respected by the man and assert herself as she rightfully deserves, one realizes that in neighboring Europe things are not much better even now under many aspects.