Literary fiction with fantastical elements. The author is from Argentina and the book was translated from Spanish. A girl in a poor neighbourhood of Buenos Aires responds to her mother’s death by compulsively eating dirt. As she gets older, it becomes clear that when she eats earth associated with someone who has been murdered or disappeared, she gets visions related to whatever happened. A premise that in other hands might be turned into some sort of plot-driven story of rescue, empowerment, and redemption instead stays close to the sometimes tedious, sometimes chaotic everyday life spent living with her brother in the barrio – not that there isn’t a life saved, here and there, and plenty of lives lost, but this capacity is not one that is inherently given meaning in the story, and instead it is just one more element of this young woman’s journey that she didn’t choose and doesn’t really have much control over and often doesn’t particularly want. It clearly showcases the violence of poverty, the violence faced by women and children, and the lack of any recourse in the face of those things. Not going to lie, it’s a bit of a weird book. I liked it, but I suspect not everyone would, and I’m not convinced I entirely understood it. The translation also felt a bit awkward or out of place on occasion – in ways that were a deliberate part of the complex and to-me fascinating translator’s art, as per the her note at the end of the book, but I still wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it while reading. Anyway – a quick read, a peculiar one, and not a happy one, but I’m glad I picked it up.
Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.