Elena, locked into her ‘fucking whore illness’-her phrase, often repeated-is, I’m guessing, an archetype of how women live in the self-satisfied patriarchy that is Argentina. It seems to me that this book isn’t really, or isn’t only, a crime thriller. She’s sure somebody killed her.Ĭlaudia Piñeiro is well-known in Argentina both for her activism on behalf of women’s rights and for the kind of crime writing that reveals the dark underside of her country. But Elena knows-a phrase that echoes through the chapters-that under no circumstances would her daughter have ended her life in the way that the evidence suggests. To the police, it’s an open-and-shut case of suicide. She is making her painstaking way to visit a woman called Isabel, the only person she can think of who might be able to help her cast some light on the death of her daughter. This is a day in the life of Elena, the 63-year-old victim of a devastating form of Parkinson’s. If it went on for much longer it might lose some of its intense concentration. We are locked into a single appalling experience, and it’s hard not to be thankful that it’s short. So far, this is an almost unbearably claustrophobic novel. I, Morning (second pill) and II, Midday (third pill)
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