The Curriculum Vitae of Aurora Ortiz

Nov 9, 2025 8:39 AM

Author:Almudena Solana

This is the story of Aurora Ortiz, who lives in Madrid, and who, at the age of only thirty, has been widowed and needs to find a job. Although she is in no position to choose, she would ideally like to work as a caretaker in a quiet block of flats where she would just watch life pass by. Aurora's aspirations are simple and few, and with the help of her neighbour and friend Fany, who lends her a computer, she composes what she considers a suitable curriculum vitae and proceeds to tramp the streets of the city in search of work. With her vitality and freshness, her innocence, her unconventional intelligence and her relative lack of commercial ambition, Aurora Ortiz is a new type of heroine, one whose ethos and view of the world run contrary to most contemporary trends, she is a character who might have emerged from one of Pedro Almod-var's films. The means by which she comes to terms with the burden and pressures of modern life will strike chords with many of her own European generation.

Reviews

a whimsical, off beat paen to small village human values in the face of big city bureaucracy

—— Guardian

Almudena Solana is one of the most talented young voices within the Spanish literary scene in Spain. Her recent book, the CV of Aurora Ortiz, is a delighful story full of optimism and courage.

—— Miriam González Durantez

Taut with narrative excitement and suspense

—— Sunday Times

A plot so engrossing that it seems reckless to pick the book up in the evening if you plan to get any sleep that night

—— A. S. Byatt , Daily Mail

He is the maestro at creating suspense

—— New Statesman

McEwan's exploration of his characters' lives and secret emotions is a virtuoso display of fictional subtlety and intelligence

—— Observer

A virtuoso display

—— Observer

[An] exquisite and suspenseful novel

—— Week

A page-turner, with a plot so engrossing that it seems reckless to pick the book up in the evening if you plan to get any sleep that night

—— Alain de Botton , Daily Mail

Taut with narrative excitement and suspense...a novel of rich diversity that triumphantly integrates imagination and intelligence, rationality and emotional alertness

—— Sunday Times

He is the maestro at creating suspense: the particular, sickening, see-sawing kind that demands a kind of physical courage from the reader to continue reading

—— New Statesman

A novel of rich diversity

—— Sunday Times

From the first page to the last, The Time Traveler's Wife works its unique magic... A beautiful, lyrical book

—— Tony Parsons , The Times

After I read it I wanted to share it with everybody, and even gave a copy to Madonna when she co-presented my show

—— Jo Whiley , Easy Living

Dark, unpredictable, incredibly clever and a modern romance

—— Cecelia Ahern , Grazia

A delight

—— Bookseller

A love affair that will totally capture your heart

—— Glamour Magazine

An irrestible romance

—— InStyle

A beautifully written, compulsive look at a couple trying to live an ordinary life in extraordinary circumstances

—— Image

An intriguing, often funny love story

—— Eve

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