An estate agent with a passion for her job is preparing a house for a visit from some buyers when she runs into a seven-year-old boy who doesn’t blink. Having been trapped in this place for a very long time, like an insect in a glass bottle, the boy hopes for something from her he can barely even ask and which ends up creating an absolute and disturbing mutual dependency between them. In this “ghost story without ghosts”, Barba reveals an exquisite talent for dissecting human intimacy. By replicating the style of the genre, he creates a distillate of the best of his realist writing. Full off doubles and temporal crossings, the almost mechanical precision establishes this novel alongside great classics of the genre like Henry James and Bioy Casares, but in a contemporary version full of lyricism, delicacy and cruelty, similar to the aesthetic of Lindqvist or Shirley Jackson.