Nothing matters

This first novel by Álvaro Robledo surprised by its precocity when it was published almost ten years ago. It is the story of four friends—a Latin American, an Irishman, and two Danes—who embark on a trip in a '74 Ford Mustang through the United Kingdom in search of the Scottish barn where, the ghosts say, Jethro Tull made his debut one day. The narrator and protagonist of Nothing Matters takes us through the cold of the north and his most intimate memories, through the taverns of Dover and the dawns of Liverpool, the bookstores of Hay-on-Wye and the impressions of an aging England. Many might think that it is a period novel, a necessary declaration of principles about the empty and late nineties. Nothing could be further from the truth: this is a novel about friendship and the sadness of leaving adolescence behind, as if Holden Caulfield had gotten into a car in search of meaning. It is, without a doubt, an initiation story in which the themes that will always haunt us are present.