A novel about a young Spanish architect's affair with an older German woman. The exploits of Beto, a young architect who heads to Munich with his girlfriend to take part in a landscape-planning competition. In an instant, a text message Beto wasn't meant to receive shatters him, leaving him bewildered and heading nowhere. But unintentionally he falls into the arms of Helga, an older woman, in a cross-generational encounter that is the heart of the tale. “With brilliant touches of witty humour, Trueba develops the theme of time with the narrative’s month-by-month calendar structure, Beto’s design of an hourglass garden, and the glaring age difference between the two lovers . . .  A delightfully rendered, bittersweet representation of a May-December romance.” — Library Journal