Ischia

Heffes (Sophie La Belle) builds an expansive story out of a 14-year-old girl’s long wait for a ride at the Buenos Aires airport. When Ischia’s friend fails to pick her up as planned, she begins fantasizing about what she’ll do next, spinning stories that take her to the streets of the Argentine capital as well as to Amsterdam and Istanbul. Ischia’s scenarios veer from the perverse to the sorrowful: she dreams of partnering with another friend to build a Great House of Perdition, a brothel and parlor staffed by prepubescent children intent on corrupting patrons; at another point, while wrestling with her depression and substance abuse issues, she thinks of her 11th birthday, the last occasion Ischia and her seven older brothers were all together. She also recalls the violence enacted on her mother by Ischia’s father during her childhood, followed by her mother’s abandonment of the family, which left the children destitute before they were separated and sent to live with different relatives. As Ischia crafts varying futures that traverse both time and space, Heffes reveals how trauma has shaped Ischia’s life, as well as fed the toxic patterns in her friendships. Heffes’s striking work brings the reader deep into her protagonist’s dark and roving imagination. (Jan.)