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142 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2015
knowing you're going to die is horrible not just because you don't want to die, but also because there's always some residual, surviving doubt. it survived in me alright, a fledgling hope, hiding behind the eyes. even though i was skeletal, mutilated, barrendeath, trauma, violence, sexuality, family, religion, class, nancy, in offering a tale of one, juxtaposes the individual's singularity with the similarity of shared human experience. with sparse prose and uncanny realism, lloret thrusts the reader into a staccato reminiscence of a life spent in struggle and defeat. nancy resonates; nancy eulogizes; nancy dignifies — perhaps most of all, nancy empathizes, with and for a life, however fictional, that seldom enjoyed the grace it so quietly deserved.
for all its evocative power, there are limits to the account fiction can give of reality, especially of certain places, communities, and subjects. physical and symbolic violence, precarious lives, poverty, and the rise of christian denominations, where no state nor any other sense of community exists, are problems to be faced, not to be idealized or framed like picturesque problems of the third world. reading nancy is no substitute for justice and dignity in the lives of chileans.