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Custody of the Eyes
An unnamed woman—a mother—struggles to survive in the face of state repression, neighborhood surveillance, extreme weather, and familial control.
Alienation and dire frustration mount as an unnamed woman—a mother—struggles to survive in the face of state repression, neighborhood surveillance, extreme weather, and familial control. Told through one side of an epistolary exchange, Custody of the Eyes (Los Vigilantes) presents letters bookended by dense ramblings by the mother's son, who struggles to speak and write and spends most of his days in lockdown rearranging his “vessels,” hysterically laughing, drooling, writhing, and withdrawing—a state that will ultimately consume his mother as well.
This is a story that explores how power is enacted on and through the body—the physical, the social, and the political. Custody of the Eyes reconfirms the essential, constitutive nature of language and expression in power and freedom.
Alienation and dire frustration mount as an unnamed woman—a mother—struggles to survive in the face of state repression, neighborhood surveillance, extreme weather, and familial control. Told through one side of an epistolary exchange, Custody of the Eyes (Los Vigilantes) presents letters bookended by dense ramblings by the mother's son, who struggles to speak and write and spends most of his days in lockdown rearranging his “vessels,” hysterically laughing, drooling, writhing, and withdrawing—a state that will ultimately consume his mother as well.
This is a story that explores how power is enacted on and through the body—the physical, the social, and the political. Custody of the Eyes reconfirms the essential, constitutive nature of language and expression in power and freedom.
104 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
13 people are currently reading
330 people want to read
About the author
Diamela Eltit
44 books140 followersDiamela Eltit (born 1947, Santiago de Chile) is a well known Chilean writer and university professor. Between 1966 and 1976 she graduated in Spanish studies at the Universidad Católica de Chile and followed graduate studies in Literature at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago. In 1977 she began a career as Spanish and literature teacher at high school level in several public schools in Santiago, such as the Instituto Nacional and the Liceo Carmela Carvajal. In 1984 she started teaching at universities in Chile, where she is currently professor at the Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana and abroad. During the last thirty years Eltit has lectured and participated in conferences, seminars and literature events throughout the world, in Europe, Africa, North and Latin America. She has been several times visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and also at Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, Washington University at Saint Louis, University of Pittsburgh, University of Virginia and, since 2007, New York University, where she holds a teaching appointment as Distinguished Global Visiting Professor and teaches at the Creative Writing Program in Spanish. In the academic year 2014-2015 Eltit was invited by Cambridge University, U.K., to the Simon Bolivar Chair at the Center of Latin American Studies. Since 2014 Diamela Eltit´s personal and literary archives are deposited at the University of Princeton. Through her career several hundreds of Latin American young writers have participated as students at her highly appreciated literature workshops.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
November 20, 2023
An abstruse, meditative, epistolary novel. The premise is simple: a young mother cares for her son, who has been expelled from school because of some act of "wickedness". He spends all his time in the house goofily laughing, arranging his "vessels" in different rooms, and hiding from visitors. The mother, on the other hand, spends all her time writing letters to the father, complaining of a neighbor who constantly spies on them. She is annoyed at the father's mother who frequently comes unannounced to inspect the house and her grandson, finding fault everywhere. When the mother decides to take in homeless men during a lethal cold-snap, the father brings charges against her for crimes that are never made explicit. There is an innuendo about sex-work but in reality, she is a political outsider and the charges themselves are irrelevant. No defense can save her from the underlying crime of dissidence. She sees herself surrounded by a "rabid coalition" that has expropriated and monopolized the civic ideals of "order" and "modernity" and "labor" and "the West". She is the collateral victim, the mother, the good Samaritan, who will be persecuted for her naive conscience.
It is an enigmatic, Kafkaesque story, told as a series of letters from the mother to the father, sometimes sad, sometimes vengeful and murderous. The novel is an allegory of the ways in which political repression changes language. The mother and son form a contrasting pair. Cast aside, subjected to constant surveillance, prosecuted for obscure crimes, she responds with increasingly voluminous letters. She rages against the father, his mother, her watchful neighbors, an indifferent government. She lists every grievance, details every incursion into her home and her private life. She doesn't write because she expects or even hopes for something to change. She writes simply to "find out how much my words failed". Her political powerlessness is sublimated into unfiltered logorrhea and pointless epistolography, trying to find some words, any words, to express her outrage at this hazy dictatorship. On the other hand, the son has regressed into infantile drooling. His two monologues, at the start and end of the novel, are babbling baby-talk, cries of hunger, desperate pleas to escape the cold, begging to be cleaned. Where subjugation has made her recklessly voluble, it has made him mute and guileless.
It is an enigmatic, Kafkaesque story, told as a series of letters from the mother to the father, sometimes sad, sometimes vengeful and murderous. The novel is an allegory of the ways in which political repression changes language. The mother and son form a contrasting pair. Cast aside, subjected to constant surveillance, prosecuted for obscure crimes, she responds with increasingly voluminous letters. She rages against the father, his mother, her watchful neighbors, an indifferent government. She lists every grievance, details every incursion into her home and her private life. She doesn't write because she expects or even hopes for something to change. She writes simply to "find out how much my words failed". Her political powerlessness is sublimated into unfiltered logorrhea and pointless epistolography, trying to find some words, any words, to express her outrage at this hazy dictatorship. On the other hand, the son has regressed into infantile drooling. His two monologues, at the start and end of the novel, are babbling baby-talk, cries of hunger, desperate pleas to escape the cold, begging to be cleaned. Where subjugation has made her recklessly voluble, it has made him mute and guileless.
April 1, 2024
La novela juega con la identidad de lo femenino que, a través del lenguaje, articula una necesidad expresiva frente a un entorno superlativamente AUTORITARIO donde no hay posibilidad de voz.
June 13, 2025
No deseo tener descendencia. Una de las múltiples razones es la posibilidad de un nefasto día ser un apóstata de mis deseos de ser mejor persona y retornar a los vicios de mis relaciones familiares. Es la primera novela que leo Diamela Eltit. Me incomodó profundamente y de la mejor manera posible.
September 20, 2016
Brillante y delirante novela que relata la persecución psíquica de una madre permanentemente encerrada y vigilada por las tradiciones, las reglas, los deberes.
Las cartas sin respuesta de la madre son de una prosa difícil, rebuscada, delirante.
El personaje del hijo es un reto a la concentración del lector.
Recomendable. Difícil, pero interesante y recomendable novela. Vale la pena leerla.
Las cartas sin respuesta de la madre son de una prosa difícil, rebuscada, delirante.
El personaje del hijo es un reto a la concentración del lector.
Recomendable. Difícil, pero interesante y recomendable novela. Vale la pena leerla.
October 28, 2025
I think it's the first time when a book summons so many emotions and feelings in me – I am now sitting with an empty chest, trying to process what I have just gone through.
The story gradually kept getting more and more anxiety inducing, I would take breaks after a few pages in order to calm my chest down. Even though the story is soul wrenching, the way of writing is captivating and beautiful – marking sentences that captured my attention made me realise how much I enjoy Diamela's writing.
I read this book published by Steinberg Press (Montana series) – the book is shimmery purple, has rounded paper edges, there's a play with fonts and illuminated initials which made the whole reading experience a pure pleasure. I felt how the visual appearance and physical feeling of the book correlated with the story.
Also, the ending... Speechless.
The story gradually kept getting more and more anxiety inducing, I would take breaks after a few pages in order to calm my chest down. Even though the story is soul wrenching, the way of writing is captivating and beautiful – marking sentences that captured my attention made me realise how much I enjoy Diamela's writing.
I read this book published by Steinberg Press (Montana series) – the book is shimmery purple, has rounded paper edges, there's a play with fonts and illuminated initials which made the whole reading experience a pure pleasure. I felt how the visual appearance and physical feeling of the book correlated with the story.
Also, the ending... Speechless.
November 1, 2024
2.5
A epistolary novel - a mother writes to her child’s father to cease his incessant need to control, surveillance and dictate how she should parent when he knows nothing about his son. I found her raging and pleading to be exhausting, like honey you need to go no contact with this guy, it’s just draining you and me both.
Her voice reminds me of Virginia wolf - the author definitely put their thesaurus to use.
The book opens and ends with the son’s perspective - blabbering and mostly nonsensical. The book alludes to an incident at his school but it is not elucidated. Most of this book seems to be skirting around things and obscure. I was left scratching my head at the end, unsure of what happened. The writing is lovely but as a story it just tired me out.
A epistolary novel - a mother writes to her child’s father to cease his incessant need to control, surveillance and dictate how she should parent when he knows nothing about his son. I found her raging and pleading to be exhausting, like honey you need to go no contact with this guy, it’s just draining you and me both.
Her voice reminds me of Virginia wolf - the author definitely put their thesaurus to use.
The book opens and ends with the son’s perspective - blabbering and mostly nonsensical. The book alludes to an incident at his school but it is not elucidated. Most of this book seems to be skirting around things and obscure. I was left scratching my head at the end, unsure of what happened. The writing is lovely but as a story it just tired me out.
September 27, 2020
Los vigilantes ganó el premio Jose Nuez Martin en el año 1996.
Esta novela de Diamela Eltit comienza con el relato del hijo de los protagonistas el cual cuenta, desde su óptica de niño, como ve a su madre.
Luego, la novela cambia de narradores y serán los papas quienes otorgan información/ confesión de los hechos. Cada uno a través de cartas transmiten sus pensamientos y sentimientos respecto a la expulsión de su hijo del colegio.
Las narraciones generan una asfixia al lector, una presión por las iniquidades que se contemplan al ser observador de la opresiones que sufre la madre por querer mantener su posición materna y la lucha por el cuidado personal de su hijo.
Un padre ausente, una abuela paterna juzgadora, una madre observada por la justicia y por sus vecinos -quienes a pedido del padre vigilan todo lo que la madre hace- dan cuenta de las asimetrías de poder que existen entre hombres y mujeres y sus roles de género.
Es una novela que envuelve por la rabia de lo que se observa y por las injusticias que vive la protagonista.
En términos técnicos, tiene un lenguaje entretejido y poético. Es un libro denso y con muchas aristas que abordar, desde los roles de género hasta la posición de los niños como sujetos desamparados al alero de un conflicto por su cuidado. Los niños representan a sujetos subversivos que intentan luchar contra los cánones sociales impuestos por una sociedad hipernormada y occidental.
Lo anterior se contrarresta con una posición política de la autora en cuanto a la pobreza en chile y la posición de los desamparados.
Joyita.
Esta novela de Diamela Eltit comienza con el relato del hijo de los protagonistas el cual cuenta, desde su óptica de niño, como ve a su madre.
Luego, la novela cambia de narradores y serán los papas quienes otorgan información/ confesión de los hechos. Cada uno a través de cartas transmiten sus pensamientos y sentimientos respecto a la expulsión de su hijo del colegio.
Las narraciones generan una asfixia al lector, una presión por las iniquidades que se contemplan al ser observador de la opresiones que sufre la madre por querer mantener su posición materna y la lucha por el cuidado personal de su hijo.
Un padre ausente, una abuela paterna juzgadora, una madre observada por la justicia y por sus vecinos -quienes a pedido del padre vigilan todo lo que la madre hace- dan cuenta de las asimetrías de poder que existen entre hombres y mujeres y sus roles de género.
Es una novela que envuelve por la rabia de lo que se observa y por las injusticias que vive la protagonista.
En términos técnicos, tiene un lenguaje entretejido y poético. Es un libro denso y con muchas aristas que abordar, desde los roles de género hasta la posición de los niños como sujetos desamparados al alero de un conflicto por su cuidado. Los niños representan a sujetos subversivos que intentan luchar contra los cánones sociales impuestos por una sociedad hipernormada y occidental.
Lo anterior se contrarresta con una posición política de la autora en cuanto a la pobreza en chile y la posición de los desamparados.
Joyita.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 11, 2024
I really enjoyed this book. It’s weird and beautiful and heartbreaking. The narrator is unreliable, telling her story through a series of one-way letters that shift between angry, resentful, threatening, confused, sad, regretful, pleading, and resigned. She lives under constant surveillance and judgment, under threat of being separated from her son, under threat of a trial against her.
February 2, 2025
Este libro deja más preguntas que respuestas, pero seguramente no quedas indiferente.
December 7, 2025
que raro
June 3, 2021
Desgarradora. Me encantó la construcción de ambos personajes, pude percibir claramente sus trastornos más profundos. Eltit tiene una fijación con las relaciones madre-hijo/a y las entiende muy bien.
December 12, 2024
It’s interesting to read the prompt for this response, which asks us to analyze this writing
as a kind of “begging” because for most of the book I saw it more as long, winding arguing from
a wife to a husband. Mama complained to him about her domestic life, the neighborhood, her
mother in law, all of which was overall pretty standard. However, my view of the story changed
when she invited the homeless into her home, and suddenly it felt like she had invited all the
environmental problems of her world in as well. Up until then, the letters focused more on her
life as a single housewife raising her child in what seemed like a conservative society, and she
gave me the impression of being mostly conservative as well, albeit fighting that identity
internally. But then she invites the homeless into her house, and eventually says that they were
two families that she couldn’t leave out to die “in the cold.” This causes every other force in the
story; her mother-in-law, the neighbors, her “husband” (who eventually we discover may not
even exist) to decidedly turn against her, and she falls under a state of surveillance while she is
being tried for eviction from her community. At this point we also get a real sense of the dystopia
this story takes place in, where living outside of this community will lead to certain death, and
that the state they live in is in an internal war (against elements of both nature and politics) as
well as external, the “west” vs the “east.”
This shift in the narrative propels Mama into a heroic character, and her writing stops
being “letters to her husband” and are revealed to be a quasi-magical/ medicinal practice through
which she keeps herself alive, as if recording her daily conflicts and how others treat her was
able to physically protect her. Towards the end she acknowledges that this writing will be used
against her in the trial, so the writing has a double effect for her, both representing salvation and
culpability. In retrospect, now I see her writing not as arguing with a husband, but actually her
attempt to record her side of the story, her way of begging to stay alive. Which is why at some
point she says she is not sure if he is a judge, a cop, or another kind of judicial worker, because
she knows she may be writing this for a tribunal. Her part of the story ends with her writing, and
we are taken to her child in the last chapter, who is hauling her through the barren city, in which
as night sets it gets colder and colder, and will kill them if they don’t reach fire. The theme of
class hierarchies under a repressive government is prevalent throughout the story, and although I
didn’t touch on it too much in this response, it is the most interesting part of the story to me.
Considering that the book was originally published in 1994, Eltit is definitely referencing life
after the coup that brought Pinochet’s dictatorship into power until 1990 in Chile. By the end of
the book, Mama and child are part of the “homeless,” exiled and left to die at the hand of their
community who saw her as too revolutionary. Her writing no longer serves as a source of
possible salvation, and Mama is left being dragged by the leg of her child begging for food,
eventually dying under a starless night.
as a kind of “begging” because for most of the book I saw it more as long, winding arguing from
a wife to a husband. Mama complained to him about her domestic life, the neighborhood, her
mother in law, all of which was overall pretty standard. However, my view of the story changed
when she invited the homeless into her home, and suddenly it felt like she had invited all the
environmental problems of her world in as well. Up until then, the letters focused more on her
life as a single housewife raising her child in what seemed like a conservative society, and she
gave me the impression of being mostly conservative as well, albeit fighting that identity
internally. But then she invites the homeless into her house, and eventually says that they were
two families that she couldn’t leave out to die “in the cold.” This causes every other force in the
story; her mother-in-law, the neighbors, her “husband” (who eventually we discover may not
even exist) to decidedly turn against her, and she falls under a state of surveillance while she is
being tried for eviction from her community. At this point we also get a real sense of the dystopia
this story takes place in, where living outside of this community will lead to certain death, and
that the state they live in is in an internal war (against elements of both nature and politics) as
well as external, the “west” vs the “east.”
This shift in the narrative propels Mama into a heroic character, and her writing stops
being “letters to her husband” and are revealed to be a quasi-magical/ medicinal practice through
which she keeps herself alive, as if recording her daily conflicts and how others treat her was
able to physically protect her. Towards the end she acknowledges that this writing will be used
against her in the trial, so the writing has a double effect for her, both representing salvation and
culpability. In retrospect, now I see her writing not as arguing with a husband, but actually her
attempt to record her side of the story, her way of begging to stay alive. Which is why at some
point she says she is not sure if he is a judge, a cop, or another kind of judicial worker, because
she knows she may be writing this for a tribunal. Her part of the story ends with her writing, and
we are taken to her child in the last chapter, who is hauling her through the barren city, in which
as night sets it gets colder and colder, and will kill them if they don’t reach fire. The theme of
class hierarchies under a repressive government is prevalent throughout the story, and although I
didn’t touch on it too much in this response, it is the most interesting part of the story to me.
Considering that the book was originally published in 1994, Eltit is definitely referencing life
after the coup that brought Pinochet’s dictatorship into power until 1990 in Chile. By the end of
the book, Mama and child are part of the “homeless,” exiled and left to die at the hand of their
community who saw her as too revolutionary. Her writing no longer serves as a source of
possible salvation, and Mama is left being dragged by the leg of her child begging for food,
eventually dying under a starless night.
March 4, 2025
Gracias a mi querida maestra alma Sandoval pude entender la novela en su profundidad con la genialidad de Damiela Eltit escritora chilena del grupo de las señoras del boom y que aún vive
Una madre y un hijo que el padre deja y asfixia la vigilancia de chismosos vecinos, suegros y lo que más me llegó fue como procuro a los desamparados me recordó tanto a un relato loco que escribí de los indigentes. Que manera de escribir con mayúsculas, con palabras como bambam, sin puntos comas crea su propio estilo. Hablar de la dictadura sin decir la palabra dictadura, el hambre como personaje, Insisto si no la leía acompañada por alma me hubiera quedado corta y sin comprender tantas cosas
Una madre y un hijo que el padre deja y asfixia la vigilancia de chismosos vecinos, suegros y lo que más me llegó fue como procuro a los desamparados me recordó tanto a un relato loco que escribí de los indigentes. Que manera de escribir con mayúsculas, con palabras como bambam, sin puntos comas crea su propio estilo. Hablar de la dictadura sin decir la palabra dictadura, el hambre como personaje, Insisto si no la leía acompañada por alma me hubiera quedado corta y sin comprender tantas cosas
May 30, 2025
La narración transmite el encierro, no solo de la ciudad, ni de un departamento, sino de una situación cultural y social. El abuso de poder de un padre que no está presente, pero que asedia a una mujer que busca como salir adelante a su manera. ¿Qué simboliza el hijo? A lo largo de la historia me pregunto si tiene alguna discapacidad o que explica todos sus juegos o comportamientos extraños. Una lectura completamente intrigante y desmotivadora, sobre la situación de las madres solteras, en una sociedad que solo sabe juzgar.
June 17, 2021
Una novela perturbadora, muy insistente y en mi opinión repetitiva. Con una narrativa obsesivamente trágica y obscura. Un libro denso por la sensaciones de angustia y difícil de leer y que me deja pensando cual es el mensaje de la autora.
Una historia encriptada de lo que pasó en Chile...
Una novela atemporal y lamentable y posiblemente aplicable a America Latina...
Una historia encriptada de lo que pasó en Chile...
Una novela atemporal y lamentable y posiblemente aplicable a America Latina...
September 26, 2025
很典型的极权统治下的文学产物，孤立的母亲和孩子夜以继日受到来自外界的监视，而不在场的父亲像一个幽灵一双眼睛，牢牢掌控着她们。文章主体由母亲写给父亲的信件构成，但读者对于母亲身份的认知是在她与父亲的关系中形成的。母亲通过发送者和接受者之间存在的关系被建构为主体，体现出她相对于父亲的从属地位。而父亲这只无形的手可以调转所有社会上的力量来针对她，用尽所有国家机器和威权让她屈服。到故事结束时，母亲第一次明确说出自己的名字Margarita，并承认孩子是自己的，也许象征着从审查下的逃离，建立起自己的身份。最后一章依然由孩子的呓语开始，而母亲变得沉默，最终孩子掌控了这个故事，她们一起到达了有火堆的地方，冰冷和饥饿的余威依然残留，但大概能有自由的新开始
March 21, 2023
Si bien creo que el concepto es interesante, no termino de ser fan de la novela experimental. No termino de enganchar con el formato de prologo y epilogo. Y el contenido se hace medio reiterativo, incluso siendo corta la novela.
May 22, 2025
Caí presa de tu prolijo tejido pues no fui capaz de precaver en cuánto se había extendido tu rencor. ¿Caminabas acaso pensando el instante final de mi caída?, ¿te reías?, ¿disfrutabas adivinando el contorno de mis huesos? Este final que se avecina, ¿sé cumple según la exactitud de tus deseos?
August 18, 2020
This is a great example of unreliable narration. Wish we'd read this in my class about unreliable narrators in undergrad, but alas, that class only read white men.
Read
October 27, 2022i have no idea what just happened
September 28, 2023
El inicio me parecia prometedor y desafiante pero luego se hace un poco reiterativa y no logre conectar con la manera en la que esta narrada
October 25, 2023
Lectura exprés, muy buena
May 15, 2025
(3,5) me costó seguirle el hilo, aunque agradecida de leer mi primera novela epistolar
July 25, 2025
la forma como esta novela juega con el lector y con la paranoia me asombro.
March 29, 2023
Una novela extraña, cargada de opresión. Juegan en ella dos voces. La primera abre y cierra la novela, es la voz de un hijo, que se sabe extraño y encerrado rodeando a su madre. La segunda, la madre, de quien conocemos su voz solo a través de las cartas que le escribe al padre de la criatura, si conocer nunca las respuestas de este, aunque se encuentren implícitas. Es una novela sobre el encierro, pero también sobre los resquicios de rebeldía que existen en situaciones extremas.
January 19, 2013
Lo que me encantó de este libro es que expone el lenguaje de la psicósis de una manera maravillosa.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews