Cathedrals

Argentine novelist Piñeiro (Elena Knows) explores the effects of Catholic dogma on a family in this explosive story of a murder and its aftermath. Thirty years after the body of Ana Sarda was found dismembered and burnt in an empty lot, her sister Lia is visited by their younger sister Carmen and Carmen’s husband, Julián, whom Lia hasn’t talked to since Ana’s death. Carmen and Julián’s son, Mateo, has gone missing, and the couple learned he visited a bookstore in Santiago de Compostela, where Lia works. The narrative shifts among the characters’ perspectives as they reveal lifelong secrets, piece together clues about what happened to Ana, and reflect on the ways their lives and family relationships have been warped by the church they were raised in. (Mateo, describing his parents’ reaction to his crisis of faith, notes that they “tr[ied] to banish those doubts, sending me to psychologists—Catholic ones, of course—as if my doubts were obscene or signalled a psychotic break”). As the story unfolds, Piñeiro beautifully blends mystery and true crime tropes with incisive insights into the church’s sexual repression and subjugation of women. It’s an illuminating page-turner. (May)