Chilco
A Novel
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- USD 11.99
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- USD 11.99
Descripción editorial
A near-future fable about love, life, and friendship in a world that’s coming apart.
Chilco is the name of Pascale’s home island. It is also the Mapudungun word for fuchsia: a word that evokes tropical lushness, wetness, the deep greenness of the forest. Pascale's partner, Marina, grew up in the vertical slums of Capital City, a place scarred by centuries of colonialism and now the ravages of feckless developers. Every day the couple fear a sinkhole will open up and take with it another poor neighborhood, another raft of desperate refugees from the hinterlands: the indigenous, the poor, who are toiling for an all-consuming machine that is devouring the earth from beneath their feet.
When they finally flee the collapsing city to live in Chilco, are they escaping from the crushing weight of centuries of colonial repression that have eroded indigenous memories, language, and culture, or are they merely stepping into a twisted, lush new version of it? From her first days in this place where she’s supposed to feel safe and at home, Marina can’t avoid the feeling that everything is decaying around her—there is a smell of putrefaction in the air that no one except her can detect; there are seismic rifts that the political cruelties of the times have opened up in her own relationship with Pascale; and she is haunted by insistent memories of her past.
In Chilco, Daniela Catrileo’s baroque, tropical jeremiad, the wounds of capitalism and empire inflict themselves on the person and on the land, but linger most devastatingly in language and memory. Indigenous Mapudungun and Quechua words, history, and cosmology form the chorus to this tropical fever dream of life, love, death, and friendship.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Chilean writer Catrileo debuts with an impressive story of catastrophe and culture clash in near-future Chile. Mari, the 26-year-old narrator, has recently decamped with her partner, Pascale, from the overcrowded Capital City of her birth for Pascale's homeland, the quiet and mysterious island of Chilco. Famous for its rebellious spirit and strong Indigenous communities, Chilco seems to move at a slower pace than the mainland, but that's not the only thing Mari has a difficult time adjusting to. Pascale's friends and neighbors don't believe a city girl such as herself could ever fully appreciate or understand Chilco, though Mari is also of Indigenous descent. The narrative moves backwards in time, weaving in stories of Mari's upbringing in a matriarchal household and the political unrest and natural disasters that begin to plague Capital City—from demonstrations in which houses are intentionally destroyed, to a series of sinkholes that devour pockets of the city—and finally force the couple to flee to Chilco. Though the dialogue often feels stiff, particularly in moments of tension, such as when Pascale and Mari debate whether to leave the city, Catrileo keeps the novel afloat with razor-sharp observations on the city's exploitive colonial history and staggering decay. It's a rewarding story of chosen family.
