El brillo de las luciérnagas

"El brillo de las luciérnagas" ("The Light of the Fireflies") is a 2013 psychological thriller by Spanish author Paul Pen, published by Plaza & Janés and the first book in his "Luciérnagas" series. It became a word-of-mouth bestseller in Spain, selling more than 250,000 copies and establishing Pen — sometimes billed as "the Spanish Stephen King" — as one of the country's leading thriller writers.

The novel is narrated by a ten-year-old boy who has never left the basement where he lives with his parents, grandmother, brother and sister, all of them disfigured by a fire he does not remember. His sister wears a white mask to hide her burns, and since she gave birth to a baby, the adults around him have grown evasive and strange. The boy suspects he is being lied to — about who the baby's father really is, about the "Cricket Man" (Hombre Grillo) he is warned prowls outside at night, and about what happened before he was born and why the family is confined at all. His one comfort is a jar of fireflies that recently found their way into the basement, creatures he finds endlessly fascinating for making their own light in the dark.

Told in a child's naive, limited voice, the book uses that innocence to slowly unspool a much darker adult story of family secrets, guilt and confinement, weaving in themes of imagination, childhood, old age, love, deception and the pull between captivity and freedom.