Cousins
-
- 12,99 €
Descripción editorial
At the age of 85, Aurora Venturini stunned Argentine readers when her darkly funny and formally daring novel, Cousins, won Página/12's New Novel Award. She had already written more than thirty books-but it was only then, in 2007, that she was widely recognized as a radical voice in Spanish-language literature. Venturini never stopped writing in her 92 years and lived a life immersed in the literature and culture of the twentieth century: her first award was given to her in person by Jorge Luis Borges, she was friends and colleagues with Eva Peron; and when she lived in exile in Paris she socialized with a sparkling milieu of writers and philosophers, including Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Widely regarded as Venturini's masterpiece, Cousins is the story of four women from an impoverished, dysfunctional family in La Plata, Argentina, who are forced to suffer a series of ordeals including disfigurement, illegal abortions, miscarriages, sexual abuse and murder, narrated by a daughter whose success as a painter offers her a chance to achieve economic independence and help her family as best she can.
Neighborhood mythologies, family, female sexuality, vengeance, and social mobility through art are explored and scrutinized in the unmistakable voice of an unforgettable protagonist, Yuna, who stares wildly at the world in which she is compelled to live; a voice unique in its candidness, sharp edge and utterly breathtaking power. Cousins is the jewel in Venturini's oeuvre-mischievous and stylish, vital and mysterious, and completely original.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Argentine writer Venturini makes her posthumous English-language debut with a sordid and morbidly funny tale of sexual violence, first published in 2007 when she was 85. Yuna is a gifted art student in La Plata, Argentina, who supports her disabled younger sister, Betina, and their single mother. Under the auspices of her professor José, Yuna becomes a rising star. But despite her reputation and success as an artist, she struggles to protect Betina and their cousins Carina and Petra from sexual predators, including a neighbor and another character whose misdeeds are a surprise. Yuna narrates her family's tragedies in spiraling and sometimes spectacular run-on sentences, professing that punctuation tires her out. Through keen and quirky observations, she finds humor in the darkness, "The end of everything is dessert. I once thought when looking at a dead gentleman in a coffin enveloped by the big embroidered napkin, or whatever it is, that he looked like a dessert being served up to someone." Cousin Petra, a sex worker, teaches Yuna that while the men in their orbit commit rape as naturally as breathing, there is always room for revenge while the wronged yet live. Short, sharp, and startling, this will surely have readers eager to see more of Venturini's special derangement.
