28. Lovers at the Museum - a short story by Isabel Allende

listened on Audible
25 pgs.

2024
Adult Magical Realism
Finished 3/29/24
Goodreads rating: 3.45
My rating: 2.5
Setting: contemporary Bilbao

My comments: Very young man and woman were caught in the morning in one of the displays at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, tangled together...she in a wedding gown, he naked...in one of the displays.  Discovered by a jittery cleaner and interrogated by a no-nonsense cop, the couple insisted the museum had not been locked and that they had more-or-less floated through it during their evening of lovemaking/copulation.  A very strange short story.  Perhaps from some sort of dream Allende had recently?

Goodreads synopsis:  From the New York Times bestselling author of The Wind Knows My Name comes a mesmerizing tale of two passionate souls who share one magical night that defies all rational explanation.

Love, be it wild or tender, often defies logic. In fact, at times, the only rationale behind the instant connection of two souls is plain magic.

Bibiña Aranda, runaway bride, wakes up in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao still wearing her wedding dress, draped in the loving arms of a naked man whose name she doesn’t know. She and the man with no clothes, Indar Zubieta, attempt to explain to the authorities how they got there. It’s a story of love at first sight and experience beyond compare, one that involves a dreamlike journey through the museum.

But the lovers’ transcendent night bears no resemblance to the crude one Detective Larramendi attempts to reconstruct. And no amount of fantastical descriptions can convince the irritated inspector of the truth.

Allende’s dreamy short story has the power to transport readers in any language, leaving them to ponder the wonders of love long after the story’s over.