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Abyss / Pilar Quintana ; translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextLanguage: English Original language: Spanish Publisher: New York : World Editions, 2023Copyright date: ©2021Description: 219 pages ; 21 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781642861228
  • 1642861227
Uniform titles:
  • Abismos. English
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Summary: "Claudia seeks the attention of her melancholic mother, also named Claudia, who occupies her days reading gossip magazines and tending to the family's teeming collection of house plants in their Cali, Colombia, apartment. The mother is particularly obsessed with the deaths of famous women such as actor Natalie Wood, who died in 1981, and tells the narrator they took their own lives to escape from domineering men. The older Claudia married the narrator's father, Jorge, at 19 when he was 42, and though he's away working most of the time, the younger Claudia reveres him. The older Claudia then begins a secret love affair with her 30-year-old brother in law, which is exposed during a family trip to a seashore city, and Jorge threatens to kick Claudia out. Overhearing this, the narrator changes her view of Jorge, likening him to a monster. Later, the older Claudia's best friend, Gloria dies by suicide, and Claudia's comments on Gloria, who suffered from depression, make the narrator worried about her mother's safety and well-being. Visceral images propel the story ("Mama laughed so wide, you could see the roof of her mouth, hollow and grooved like an underfed torso"), as the narrator grows increasingly concerned about what's going to happen next."-- Provided by publisher.
Fiction notes: Click to open in new window
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Shelving location Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library Fiction In Case You Missed It QUINTANA PILAR ICYMI - Recently New Available 33111010957963
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN TRANSLATED LITERATURE FINALIST

By the Colombian author of The Bitch , a 2020 National Book Award Finalist and PEN Awards Winner

"An eight-year-old girl takes in a series of troubling eventsin this luminous and transfixing account of fractured family life fromColombian writer Quintana ( TheBitch ). Readers will be dazzled." -- Publishers Weekly , STARRED REVIEW

Claudia is an impressionable eight-year-old girl, trying to understand the world through the eyes of the adults around her. But her hardworking father hardly speaks a word, while her unhappy mother spends her days reading celebrity lifestyle magazines, tending to her enormous collection of plants, and filling Claudia's head with stories about women who end their lives in tragic ways. Then an interloper arrives, disturbing the delicate balance of family life, and Claudia's world starts falling apart. In this strikingly vivid portrait of Cali, Colombia, Claudia's acute observations remind us that children are capable of discerning extremely complex realities even if they cannot fully understand them. In Abyss , Quintana leads us brilliantly into the lonely heart of the child we have all once been, driven by fear of abandonment.

First published as Los abismos in Spain.

"Claudia seeks the attention of her melancholic mother, also named Claudia, who occupies her days reading gossip magazines and tending to the family's teeming collection of house plants in their Cali, Colombia, apartment. The mother is particularly obsessed with the deaths of famous women such as actor Natalie Wood, who died in 1981, and tells the narrator they took their own lives to escape from domineering men. The older Claudia married the narrator's father, Jorge, at 19 when he was 42, and though he's away working most of the time, the younger Claudia reveres him. The older Claudia then begins a secret love affair with her 30-year-old brother in law, which is exposed during a family trip to a seashore city, and Jorge threatens to kick Claudia out. Overhearing this, the narrator changes her view of Jorge, likening him to a monster. Later, the older Claudia's best friend, Gloria dies by suicide, and Claudia's comments on Gloria, who suffered from depression, make the narrator worried about her mother's safety and well-being. Visceral images propel the story ("Mama laughed so wide, you could see the roof of her mouth, hollow and grooved like an underfed torso"), as the narrator grows increasingly concerned about what's going to happen next."-- Provided by publisher.

In English, translated from Spanish.

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