Reservoir Bitches
Stories
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
LONGLISTED for the 2025 International Booker Prize
A debut collection of gritty, streetwise, and wickedly funny stories about Mexican women who fight, skirt, cheat, cry, kill, and lie their way to survival.
“Life’s a bitch. That’s why you gotta rattle her cage, even if she’s foaming at the mouth.” In the linked stories of Reservoir Bitches, thirteen Mexican women prod the bitch that is Life and become her. From the all-powerful daughter of a cartel boss to the victim of transfemicide, from a houseful of spinster seamstresses to a socialite who supports her politician husband by faking Indigenous roots, these women spit on their own reduction and invent new ways to endure, telling their own stories in bold, unapologetic voices. At once a work of black humor and social critique, Reservoir Bitches is a raucous debut from one of Mexico’s most thrilling new writers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Women lie, cheat, kill, and die in Mexican writer de la Cerda's searing English-language debut. Like the unnamed narrator of "Parsley and Coca-Cola," who graphically describes her self-administered abortion after getting pregnant from a one-night stand, the women in these 13 linked stories are "trapped in an infinite loop of bad decisions with consequences that are never not dramatic." The title character of "Yuliana" is set to take over her father's drug trafficking empire when a possessive and violent man in her father's employ starts dating her friend Regina. After he murders Regina, having caught her talking to his bodyguard, Yuliana vows revenge even though her father claims the murderer is untouchable. In "Constanza," the title character darkens her blond hair to appear like a mestiza and boost her politician husband's electoral chances. "La China" details the exploits of a female narco assassin who particularly enjoys killing men who abused women. While the circumstances of each narrator vary—some are obscenely rich while others are grindingly poor—their blasé way of speaking, in-your-face sexuality, and violence start to blur together. Nonetheless, de la Cerda offers a refreshingly unapologetic voice for women who refuse to be placated. This is worth a look.
