Éramos unos niños, which is the better title.

Rosa Pérez's Spanish is lovely and the title she was given, Éramos unos niños, tells you more in three words than the English does. Past tense. Already gone. That's the whole tone of the book and the English cover doesn't have it.

Two people are poor together in New York and neither of them is unhappy about it — that is the part I trusted. Everyone writes the poor-and-young year afterwards as if it were a spiritual retreat. She writes about the actual sandwich. Who paid. What they didn't eat. The coat somebody gave her. I shared a flat in Malasaña with four people when I was twenty three and it was mostly cold and I remember it as the best year, so I know exactly the trick memory plays, and she seems to know it too.

The second half I have less to say about. Once Robert is dying it becomes a eulogy, and it's very hard to argue with a eulogy or even to have an opinion about one. It's also, in places, a little empalagoso, which is a word English badly needs. Too sweet in the mouth.

In the final I put it at seven. Not because the sadness is unearned. Because the first half is a book and the second half is a hand on a forehead.

I put Horses on afterwards and understood about a quarter of the words, same as always.