She remembers that the comment really stung and then immediately stopped stinging--like accidentally touching an open sore--when she took into account that a virtue can also be a defect if you just shift your perspective a few inches." Taken from one of the four novellas comprising Rain Over Madrid--"Fatherhood," "Guile," "Fidelity," and "Shopping"--these words encapsulate the whole book's leitmotiv: all of a sudden, someone is finally able to comprehend somebody else's life. By featuring totally divergent characters in different settings, Barba in these stories tackles issues such as death, the inability to communicate feelings, the sudden eruption of love, fascination for the other, the architecture of desire and the fear of happiness.