Irene is 37 years old and just out of prison after serving time for terrorist activities. Deciding to return home to Bilbao, she takes a bus journey across Spain, striking up conversations with the passengers who include two plainclothes policemen. As the journey progresses, so the tension builds.
After four years in a Barcelona jail, the woman was free to go home, back to the Basque country, to Bilbao. But she had nothing to go back to - her lover was dead, her husband divorced, her family had disowned her, she had no children. Back to nursing? She was burnt out. Back to her comrades in the Organization? No, they thought she had betrayed them. All that she carried with her was a suitcase with a few treasured books, a pack or two of smokes, and memories. But no plans: the horizon was empty, featureless. On the coach carrying her back to Bilbao she kept herself to herself, with only a few words to the large lady in the next seat, a couple of nuns, and two men, a smooth talker in a red tie and a tough who showed a little too much interest in her. It was as though she had no need to hide from them that she was fresh out of prison, an amnestied terrorist, her reputation compromised.
The lone woman, like the protagonist of Bernardo Atxaga's previous novel The Lone Man, is tracked, on the run; but clearly she lives under a quite different star. In the subtle, complex emotions that haunt her she gives the reader a deep insight into the prevailing anxieties of our day.
