Mejor que muerto

It is not easy for Julio to be forty-one years old and have his life resolved. Unemployed and unwilling to work, his peace of mind is barely altered by the insistence of his wife Casilda, a successful business woman, on getting pregnant. The apartment in Lavapiés where they live, a gift from their father-in-law, has a studio where they can get high and waste time as they please. Living like a drone is good, but it is not enough. Appointed president of the community of owners, he will have to call the building's squatters to order, among whom is Sara, an attractive young woman. The confinement decreed by the coronavirus will intensify Julio's relationship with his neighbors, which will make his life much more distracted. Infidelities, real estate speculation, drugs against erectile dysfunction, political disenchantment, microdoses of LSD, procreation beyond forty, immigrants without papers, Spaniards without conviction, married couples who sleep in separate rooms, sporadic use of heroin, crisis of masculinity and money in envelopes... Better than dead is a tragicomic novel that portrays the precarious contemporary existence in a confusing world where men and women, with more clumsiness than luck, look for their place.