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134 pages, Paperback
First published November 4, 2002
strangely enough, translating Glantz's apparently loose, iterative style demanded unusual precision, becuase every slight variation in her expression of an idea or image contributes to the structural coherence of the whole. It helps depict a protagonist on the verge of collapse - a woman who focuses obsessively on details to postpone having to confront a mixture of grief, rage and resentment. It matters that Nora at first perceives Juan's jacket to be the colour of hay, and then burnt straw, and then moss and then olive. It matters that she contradicts herself. It matters that she gets song lyrics slightly wrong.
The heart has impulses that reason doesn’t know.
Its not like death goes around whispering in our ear, though, does it? It just arrives, suddenly, when we least expect it. Silence falls and I move away – he’s right, I think, death doesn’t whisper in our ear, it just arrives, alone, without warning us in advance. I don’t care how simple dying or anything else is for that matter, even if it was that simplicity that made his heart explode, made it shatter into pieces (mine too), yes, life, the absurd wound that is life, yes, it’s true, the heart is only a muscle that irrigate the body, keeping it alive, a muscle that one day fails us.
“Life is an absurd wound: I think I deserve to be given condolences.”