Juanita The Fantastic

She lies with a smile. She sells haunted apartments. She calls everyone "cielo"-except when she's screaming. Juanita is seventy, living on a modest Spanish pension, with enough self-assurance to put any diva to shame. When the author, his wife, and their daughter move to Spain and end up staying-temporarily- in her home, they think they already know Juanita. What they discover is a headstrong, generous, impossible woman who rewrites her own history every time she tells it, runs the household on her schedule alone, and turns every load of laundry, every utility bill, and every morning Mass into a onewoman show. Seventeen chronicles, lived and told without a filter: the shouting matches and the fits of laughter, the colorful lies and the real moments of tenderness, the culture clash between generations and countries. A memoir that mixes dark humor with genuine warmth, and asks a question familiar to anyone who's ever shared a roof with someone impossible to live with and impossible not to love: how do you survive Juanita -and why, in spite of everything, do you find yourself wanting to go back? Inside, you'll find: a cast of characters more vivid than fiction, Spain seen from the inside-its slow pace, its warmth, its excesses-and the honest story of a forced cohabitation that tested, and sometimes strengthened, the bonds of a family. Juanita is fantastic. For readers who love unflinching portraits, family stories that don't apologize for being messy, and grandmothers you never quite get over.