The backdrop, Morocco 12 years after independence, is relayed through the perspective of a large cast of characters/extended family . Ambitious Aïcha goes back to her mother’s roots in Alsace to study medicine, and Selim gets lost on the burgeoning late 1960s hippy trail. Rich in drama, which constantly spills over into soap-opera territory, the novel is a fascinating if over-explanatory portrait of a country taking its first tentative steps towards modernisation.
Belle’s story is not one of a police procedural or thriller – though it is undeniably nasty. The prose flies and flays, is porous and illuminating. Here is Belle’s journey by sea to America: “There was nowhere to rest, nowhere to go, a thousand worn-out questions in the middle of the ocean. She was surrounded. All this that could kill and crush her, that could swallow her up and fill her throat with suffocating white foam.
The novel, written in 2018/19, was first published at the height of the Covid pandemic in 2020 and has now been beautifully translated by Heather Cleary. Reflecting on the past and two former relationships which once seemed so important to her, the narrator becomes absorbed in the care of a child, Mauro, who has been infected by the mysterious plague, which mercilessly attacks the skin. Of the past, “Memory is a broken urn,” Triás writes.
The first story, A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound, sets the tone with black comedy: in suburban Buenos Aires, a woman witnesses an elderly neighbour’s dentures fall on to her patio, to be swiftly followed by the neighbour, whose physiognomy, even in death, assumes an expression of hatred that appears to be directed at her. “He’d chosen your patio, he’d chosen you. He’d tried to kill you, or at the very least, harm you.
Ireland Latest News, Ireland Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: IrishMirror - 🏆 4. / 98 Read more »
Source: IrishTimes - 🏆 3. / 98 Read more »
Source: IrishTimesSport - 🏆 2. / 99 Read more »
Source: The42_ie - 🏆 5. / 86 Read more »
Source: businessposthq - 🏆 8. / 71 Read more »
Source: IrishTimesSport - 🏆 2. / 99 Read more »