Galdos: Meow

Benito Perez Galdos' finely-crafted novel, Meow, is a tragi-comedy. It is the story of a middle-aged, middle class middle-manager who does not know how to pull the strings that could get him reinstated to his job in the Spain's civil service, from which he has been laid off with only two months to go for him to be eligible for his pension, and save his family from certain poverty. Villaamil is obsessed with the work he used to do and needs still to be doing, not only because his family acutely n