January
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
"Hair-raisingly good . . . the plot explodes." – Lily Meyer, The New York Review of Books
“Elegant and forceful – I couldn’t put it down.” – Catherine Lacey, author of Biography of X
** ONE of THE NEW YORKER'S BEST BOOKS OF 2023 **
A pioneering, revelatory masterpiece of modern literature that conjures the life of 16-year-old girl living on the Argentine pampas — now in English for the very first time
With echoes of Edith Wharton’s Summer, this radical feminist novel broke the silence around abortion to reshape the way women’s bodies and rights were perceived in 20th-century Argentina
Perfect for readers of Tove Ditlevsen, Annie Ernaux’s Happening, and Claudia Piñeiro’s Elena Knows
A radical feminist text, January was the first Argentine novel to represent rape from the survivor’s perspective and to explore the life-threatening risks pregnancy posed, in a society where abortion was both outlawed and taboo.
In the sweltering Argentine pampas, all things bow to Nefer. Reeds nod when she digs her heels into her horse, unripe peaches snap and fall as she gallops past. Sickly-sweet air bends, churns in Nefer’s throat.
Nefer measures the distance between her body and the table, and feels something filling her up, turning against her. Her belly swells.
Desperate, Nefer visits a local medicine woman who is known to perform abortions but Nefer becomes too afraid to explain why she is truly there.
She attends confession at church but cannot confide in the priest. During a fierce argument with her mother, she finally blurts out her secret.
With a narcotic musicality and voice scorched through with honesty, Gallardo hangs before us an experience that has been lived and ignored a thousand times over. Nefer closes her eyes. We careen to her and we see.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The magnificent English-language debut from Argentine writer Gallardo (1931–1988), first published in 1958, portrays a 16-year-old girl's dilemma after she gets pregnant. Nefer's interior life is depicted in urgent terms over the course of a few days near the end of her first trimester. She wants to terminate the pregnancy before her family finds out—particularly her prying middle sister and her judgmental mother. While she considers various methods—riding hard on a horse, gathering thistle and other abortifacients—an ambivalence sets in. Though she blames the father, a ranch hand, she doesn't consider the baby "his," and as she withdraws emotionally from her family and sneaks off to a neighboring witch doctor for a consultation, she becomes increasingly attached to the child, whom she considers her "friend." This lonely period in Nefer's life culminates in a series of revelations, reversals, and surprises. The subtle workings of the story cleverly mirror the characters' euphemistic dialogue about pregnancy (a relative asks if Nefer's recently married oldest sister is "in the family way"), and Gallardo's restraint makes the occasional moments of swelling emotion even more powerful. This deserves to be a classic.
