Ensemble novel · Jonay Méndez Márquez
Medias mesas.
A whole town.
So much left unsaid.
A son wants to reach his father. A handful of neighbours sign up for a play. And five tables in a bar begin to look a little too much like their own lives.
Provisional cover
01 / The curtain rises
A play within a novel.
What was once the town’s most important play has lain buried for twenty years. Fidel wants to bring it back to the Lázaro Theatre. His father, César, vowed never to return.
A closer look at the story
What was once the town’s most important play has lain buried for twenty years.
Fidel longs to make his father, César, proud. He plans to revive the old Lázaro Theatre and bring Medias mesas back to the stage. But César vowed never to return. Vowed never to forgive. Now his son wants to make peace.
Fidel’s attempt is pathetic. He puts together his own company. Only a handful of neighbours volunteer: Alba, Cristian, Julián... People of different ages and temperaments who come to the theatre looking for a pastime and end up entangled in their own conflicts. One person’s pain is another’s comfort. Rumours fly, secrets burn. Estrangement hangs in the air.
That is Medias mesas. That is what the play they must perform is about. A tragicomedy about letting go, disillusionment, and discord, set around the five tables of Botero’s iconic bar: La Pepa, where the gossips sit; La Patronal, where the powerful gather; the drunks’ table, nicknamed La Glorieta; La Solitaria, occupied by the chronicler; and La Coja, which is not only wobbly but cursed. It is the story of Nina and Botero, and of their people. Forty years of memories, deceit, and resignation come crashing down when the truth comes to light.
Prose · Rehearsals and everyday life
The Lázaro company
Fidel brings together neighbours from different generations to perform Medias mesas again. What starts as an attempt to reconcile with his father fills with lives that cannot fit into a single protagonist. Between rehearsals, shopping, classes and conversations at the tavern, everyone comes to the theatre for a different reason.
Theatrical dialogue · Five days in the bar
Botero’s bar
Nina and Botero have kept a bar and a routine going for forty years. Around them, the tables divide the town into gossip, business, card games and solitude. The play unfolds over five days; the weight it carries goes much further back.
One stage. Unfinished business on both sides of the curtain.
03 / The people rehearsing
Nobody arrives empty-handed.
They bring a script, of course. Also their quirks, their hopes and everything they cannot say at home. Meet six of the voices in this company.
History teacher · Leads the company
Fidel
Enthusiastic, attentive and always carrying too many papers in his folder. Fidel wants to revive the Lázaro to make peace with César. Directing such a varied group may be difficult; separating his own wishes from his father’s may be harder still.
- What they want
- To make his father proud of him.
- What is at stake
- The distance between caring for someone and living to please them.
Traveller · Plays Botero
Julián
He has travelled the world with a guitar and a hat. Now he talks to his memories in an oversized house and compares his life to the flight of a swift. The theatre, and a cat that appears at his window, put his fiercely defended independence to the test.
- What they want
- To stay free, even now that he has returned home.
- What is at stake
- A life full of stories and a living room with nobody to listen.
Sixteen · A gaze that misses nothing
Alba
Alba watches adults with a mixture of weariness, sharpness and sarcasm. She is sixteen, has a little brother and has very little patience for other people’s contradictions. At the Lázaro she finds something unexpected in such an apparently old-fashioned activity: other ways of seeing herself.
- What they want
- For people to stop treating her like a child.
- What is at stake
- Finding her place between rebellion, caring and wanting to belong.
A whirlwind · Plays Tristán
Cristian
He runs, loses focus, explains himself badly and tries again. Cristian signs up for the play to be near Sofía, who plays the piano before rehearsals. His enthusiasm overwhelms every plan. Behind the comic confusion is a young man still learning to listen.
- What they want
- To find a way to approach Sofía, the girl at the piano.
- What is at stake
- The difference between falling for someone and imagining a life with them.
The Frenchwoman · Plays Nina
Magdalena
In the town, outrageous and unfair stories precede her. Onstage, Magdalena wants to be seen and applauded. Her energy and boldness contrast with the suspicions of those who believe they know her before they have spoken to her.
- What they want
- An audience. And their applause.
- What is at stake
- Being seen beyond the rumours the town tells about her.
The counter’s most unpredictable occupant
Erasmillo
He growls, interrupts and seems to have settled permanently into the make-believe bar. The company calls him Erasmillo. Beneath his absurd outbursts is a clarity that unsettles the others. Who is speaking when he speaks is a question the novel leaves room to explore.
- What they want
- To stay on that stool, inside his character.
- What is at stake
- The boundary between playing someone else and hiding behind them.
04 / Between the lines
One novel. Different ways to sound.
The narrative voice takes on the perspective of whoever is looking. Alba’s humour sounds nothing like Julián’s nostalgia; in the bar, the characters speak for themselves.
Excerpts in the original Spanish · No ending spoilers
The irony of everyday life
Botero: Sabio es quien aprende de sus errores.
Nina: Ah, ¿que hay sabios por aquí? Porque yo todavía no he visto ni uno —replicó, sagaz—. Y, si alguna vez uno se pierde y termina en este tugurio, yo misma le entregaré en mano todos los vinos que tengas escondidos por ahí.
Botero and Nina, between affection and routine.
The world, with an eye roll
Su vida era una sitcom cutrona, una sátira simplona, nada fuera de lo habitual. Género: comedia. Subgénero: sin gracia. Encima era predecible. Qué tostón.
The narrator catches Alba’s teenage sarcasm.
Everything a homecoming holds
En los salones se acumulaba la opulencia. Era así en París, en Moscú, en Medellín o en Senegal. En el salón van los mejores cuadros, las alfombras más ostentosas, las esculturas más altas, los jarrones más delicados, los trofeos más vistosos. Su salón estaba prácticamente vacío.
A traveller’s memory, back in the family living room.
05 / Small things, big questions
Everyday things carry weight.
Open each object. There is more to it than a stage prop.
The piano
Music lessons and rehearsals must share a stage. Half covered by a tablecloth, the piano also serves as La Coja. Sofía’s music and Fidel’s demands coexist in a single object: two worlds that need space.
Can the same place be a refuge for one person and an obstacle for another?
The window
A windowsill can separate an empty home from a living garden. It can also be an entrance to the theatre. The book’s windows admit air, visitors and memories: opening them is not always as simple as it seems.
What lies between letting someone in and losing your freedom?
The script
Fidel clings to the stage directions and to what the play ought to be. But his neighbours bring their voices, interruptions and wounds. One of the novel’s conflicts opens up between faithfulness to the text and what actually happens.
What happens when life goes beyond the part we have been given?
The cap
A costume piece can become a promise, an inheritance or a small dispute. Jerbo’s cap changes meaning according to who wears it and who is looking. At the Lázaro, even getting dressed is a way of searching for a place.
Who are we when we stop performing what others expect of us?
06 / For publishers and curious readers
The novel at a glance.
An ensemble story about the need for approval, the fear of change and the ways —sometimes clumsy, sometimes luminous—in which we keep each other company.
Meet the author- Status
- Complete manuscript
- Length
- Approximately 186,000 words
- Structure
- 5 parts · 93 chapters
- Genre
- Ensemble novel · Family drama · Comedy of manners
- Form and voice
- Third person with shifting perspectives, prose and theatrical dialogue
- Readers
- Adult contemporary fiction