Nancy
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Alone but for her memories, Nancy has returned to Chile to wait for her cancer to take her away. Before her illness, before her husband’s ridiculous death, before she fled home hidden in the back of a truck, she spent her youth at Playa Roja, swimming alongside the creepy old gringos amid rumors of young women gone missing and young men found dead. Nancy’s bitter mother—mi madre mala, Nancy calls her—abandoned the family and her brother disappeared without explanation. Then her father, who was all she had left, took up with a pair of young Mormon missionaries, and Nancy was left to fend for herself in a world determined to crush her spirit.
Through the haze induced by her medication, Nancy gazes deep into her adolescence and, despite the horrors that society, poverty, and family inflicted on her as a young woman, she rediscovers life—jubilant and proud. Bruno Lloret’s debut novel, moodily translated from Spanish by Ellen Jones, combines formal invention and heartrending storytelling punctuated by graves, footprints, x-rays, and crosses.
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Lloret's crushingly dark English-language debut follows a lonely, recent widow who's dying from cancer as she reflects on her life in Chile. After her diagnosis, Nancy lost her husband when he was sucked into a tuna processor at work. He was drunk at the time, so she didn't receive any insurance money. With nothing left, Nancy reminisces about her childhood with a brother who vanished one day, a sad father who turned to Mormonism late in life, and an emotionally and psychologically abusive mother who abandoned them. There is no joy or humor here, but the writing shines with piercing descriptions of pain, drawn up in increasingly fractured minimalist prose. Blocks of heavy Xs appear as forced pauses that dictate the rhythm of Nancy's consciousness and forge black, angular reminders of death: "I slept in snatches full of sad dreams XXXX the kind you never remember after you wake up, but still, when you open your eyes there's a real ache in your chest." Old Testament passages open each chapter ("Honor thy father and thy mother, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee") and often trigger memories with stark brutality, such as Nancy's mother's threats to sell her to the Romany as a child. This visually striking fever dream is one worth braving.
