cover image A Beautiful Young Woman

A Beautiful Young Woman

Julián López, trans. from the Spanish by Samuel Rutter. Melville House (PRH, dist.), $15.99 trade paper (160p) ISBN 978-1-61219-681-7

In López’s enticing debut novel, a man examines his childhood with his mother in hopes of better understanding her later disappearance in the charged political atmosphere of Buenos Aires in what appears to be the late 1970s following the military coup. The unnamed narrator combs short scenes for meaning in a voice that is sultry, longing, and defined by the abandonment that later fractures him: as he recalls, “I tried to push myself toward a childhood without deceit, without suspicions, but the truth is that I didn’t want to be there.” Furtive phone calls and his mother’s habit of leaving him alone with near-strangers lend further mystery to her entanglements and her life beyond her son. The narrator is simultaneously the young boy, frightened and alone, and the grown man, haunted by what he can neither remember nor explain. This is a detailed, moving meditation on a mother’s imperfect love, and an attempt to understand both her disappearance and who she was before disappearing. Though delicately written, it’s compulsive in its quest, never trying to neaten the messiness of grief. (Nov.)