{"product_id":"9781681370194","title":"His Only Son: with Dona Berta","description":"The unlikely hero of \u003ci\u003eHis Only Son\u003c\/i\u003e, Bonifacio Reyes, is a  romantic and a flautist by vocation—and a failed clerk and kept husband  by necessity—who dreams of a novelesque life. Tied to his shrill and  sickly wife by her purse strings, he enters timidly into a love affair  with Serafina, a seductive second-rate opera singer, encouraged by her  manager who mistakes Bonifacio for a potential patron. Meanwhile,  Bonifacio’s wife experiences a parallel awakening and in the midst of a  long-barren marriage, surprises them both with a son—but is it  Bonifacio’s? In the accompanying novella, \u003ci\u003eDoña Berta\u003c\/i\u003e, the  heroine of the title, an aged, poor, but well-born woman, forfeits her  beloved estate in search of a portrait that may be all that remains of  the secret love of her life. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhile largely unknown outside of  Spain, Leopoldo Alas was one of the most celebrated writers of criticism  in nineteenth-century Spain and employed his satirical talents to  powerful and humorous effect in fiction. \u003ci\u003eHis Only Son \u003c\/i\u003ewas  Alas’s second and final novel, full of characteristic humor,  naturalistic detail, descriptive beauty, and moral complexity. His frail  and pitiful characters—irrational, emotional actors drawn inexorably  toward their foolish fates—are yet multidimensional individuals, often  conscious of their own weaknesses and stymied by their very yearnings to  be more than the parts they find themselves playing.","brand":"New York Review Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47139813982448,"sku":"9781681370194","price":10.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781681370194_p0.jpg?v=1763692563","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781681370194","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}