FRIENDSHIP VS BETRAYAL
Dan Willis a young Englishman living in Spain is delighted when his friend Billy, a US Gulf War veteran, agrees to visit him. What Billy doesn’t realise, until it’s too late, is that Dan has also invited two other friends from their school days to what should be a happy reunion. So, why does it go horribly wrong? Set against the hot, rugged Basque landscape The Last Fiesta by Cobham based writer Andy Rumbold, is an excellent page turner of a book inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s classic modernist novel Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises.
As the friends embark on a decadent, alcohol fuelled journey that ends in Pamplona with the running of the bulls, the secret that Billy has hidden for a decade emerges from the shadows to wreak tragedy and emotional havoc.
The Last Fiesta was a finalist in the 2016 Peoples Book Prize, and it isn’t hard to see why. Rumbold is a skilled storyteller who overhangs the narrative with a barely suppressed tension that cuts across each chapter with knife edge precision. Flashback sequences paint a disturbing picture of an unravelling relationship that will have devastating consequences for the lovers and their friends when it reaches its denouement. The author uses these scenes as a platform for the final tragedy and as a conduit through which to explore the themes of friendship, sacrifice, and forgiveness. The result is a novel with an extraordinary cogency that lingers in the memory long after the final chapter has been read.
Rumbold is a terrific writer who brings stunning realism to a story that is strong and utterly poignant.
Reviewed by Juliette Foster
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