(#gifted @grantabooks) A Luminous Republic by Andrés Barba, translated by Lisa Dillman, is a strange, disturbing little book. But it actually wasn't as strange and disturbing as I had anticipated, which was a bit disappointing. You know when your own expectations for a book shoot you in the foot?

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This is a slim little novel which documents the events of a fictional town in South America. A Spanish social worker faces a new challenge when 32 feral children arrive in the town without any indication of their origins or intentions. At first their presence is a mere annoyance, as they engage in petty theft and small acts of vandalism, but things quickly escalate and result in a horrific act of violence.

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I think I was expecting more of a horror element than there was - I haven't read any of Barba's other work so I can't say if this is just his style. But A Luminous Republic is one of those works as fiction being presented as fact. The narrator spends a lot of time analysing newspaper reports, unpacking the social and cultural impacts of the event, ruminating on childhood innocence and adults' response to any 'Other' they don't understand.

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A lot of that did work! But I also found my attention waning sometimes. Barba jumps back and forth in time, as the narrator is looking back on these events several years later, and sometimes his tangents just were... dull. However, I can't fault Lisa Dillman's translation. The tone is captured perfectly, almost journalistic in style.

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I think I'd recommend this if you're looking for more of a reflection on childhood versus adulthood, rather than a dark horror tale, as you might be disappointed.