Before

by Carmen Boullosa, Peter Bush (Translator)

Part bildungsroman, part ghost story, part revenge novel, Before tells the story of a woman who returns to the landscape of her childhood to overcome the fear that held her captive as a girl. This powerful exploration of the path to womanhood and lost innocence won Mexico's two most prestigious literary prizes.

Genres: Fiction, Magical Realism, Spanish Literature, Novels, Book Club, Latinx, Novella

120 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Carmen Boullosa (b. September 4, 1954 in Mexico City, Mexico) is a leading Mexican poet, novelist and playwright. Her work is eclectic and difficult to categorize, but it generally focuses on the issues of feminism and gender roles within a Latin American context. Her work has been praised by a number of prominent writers, including Carlos Fuentes, Alma Guillermoprieto and Elena Poniatowska, as well as publications such as Publishers Weekly. She has won a number of awards for her works, and has taught at universities such as Georgetown University, Columbia University and New York University (NYU), as well as at universities in nearly a dozen other countries. She is currently Distinguished Lecturer at the City College of New York. She has two children -- Maria Aura and Juan Aura -- with her former partner, Alejandro Aura --and is now married to Mike Wallace, the Pulitzer Prize–winning co-author of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Karen (idleutopia_reads) · Rating 3 out of 5]

“I only have memories and what I imagine I might have experienced between the memories…. Only here can I weave my story with such pleasure, without the memories breaking off when summoned, because only their pleasure takes place.”

There is so much innocence in this part ghost story/part coming of age book called Before by Carmen Boullosa. To be honest, I have no idea what I read so why don’t we fumble along until the story makes sense. We’re visiting a woman who is visiting the landscape of her past to revisit an old fear that has haunted her since childhood. She had two older sisters who she was closed to but suddenly they grew up and she was no longer part of her circle. She is bullied at school, made to experience some pretty traumatic events, she calls her mother by her first name “Esther” and is proud of the artist her mother is.

There also seem to be steps that she hears a night that appear to only haunt her. She tries to stave off these ghosts by building a protective white pebble circle that gets destroyed every morning by her maid but is rebuilt by her every night until the stones get thrown away.

I think that with many Mexican women writers I have read the idea of being a woman in patriarchal macho society takes center stage. We witness a mother who is criticized for seemingly putting her art before her daughters, including being chastised by her own daughter who won’t call her Mom, there is a preoccupation with adopting a role that comes with a girl becoming a woman and the roles that are imposed or readily accepted once that event happens, how it can ostracize a girl that isn’t part of this club yet, the idea of innocence in the exploration of other bodies surrounding you, the idea of wanting to assert a self when there is a domineering force towering over your decisions, even when men rarely make it into the story, their force is still felt and oppresses.

As we follow our protagonist throughout her visit to the past, to her old fear, we begin to wonder if she was right to fear the fall into womanhood, the implications that comes with this new stage of life and dealing with grief by pretending to be dead to the world surrounding her and refusing to acknowledge her mother in her recounting of her story. All in the name of protecting her innocence from a horrible truth we get to witness in the end. Does any of this make sense?

I have no clue but the writing! I seriously couldn’t help but follow along. I wanted to know what this fear was, what the world she grew up in contained, the fears of a girl becoming a woman, how that fear turns into ghosts attacking her and the world around her. Looking back, I can remember a protection in being a girl that I knew would be gone once I became a woman, there are certain expectations placed on us that we know are coming and seem to haunt us as we see the inevitable future ahead of us. I think when we look at this story in this frame we can’t help what admire what Boullosa has done. Thanks for coming along this journey with me. It seems I did finally know what this story was about and it is utterly brilliant.

[Sadie Hartmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

BEFORE- by Carmen Boullosa
An unnamed ghost narrator tells the story of her childhood--highlighting memories of events that explain why she was such an anxious young girl.
-Coming-of-age in Mexico City
-First Person POV
-Fever dream/lyrical/non-linear/ambiguous/stream of consciousness
-magical realism
-Nostalgic
-pillow fights/special scissors in the house/school/night terrors
-the turtle :(
-family/when grandmas lived in the household
-bullying/older girls at school
-puberty
-Christianity/religion/faith
-ghosts/dreams/imaginations
-sisters
-I thought it was strange she called her mother by her first name so at first I didn't realize Esther was her mother

“I cried over the lack of attention from the two fairy godmothers who protected the threshold of my being, had prevented monsters coming in from the outside, not realizing that what I should have been mourning was the disappearance of the girls who had once been my sisters.”

-death of a parent
-THE ENDING, what?? Why??
Author: Carmen Boullosa
Translator: Peter Bush
The cover to Before by Carmen BoullosaDallas, Texas. Deep Vellum. 2016. 104 pages.

[Chris Via]

Video review: https://youtu.be/jLZfVvRIWVI

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review to come

[Oscar Calva · Rating 4 out of 5]

¿Se puede considerar a un narrador infantil como un narrador poco confiable?, la mente de los niños tan llena de imaginación, fantasía y creatividad nos puede resultar desapegada de la realidad. Pero al final de cuentas, ¿qué es la realidad? sino un conjunto de pulsos electromagnéticos interpretados por nuestra mente de acuerdo a nuestros condicionamientos y comportamientos aprendidos que nos ayudan a evaluar la ficción de la realidad.

Antes, brevísima novela semi-autobiagráfica de Carmen Boullosa, ganadora del premio Xavier Villaurrutia tiene una cualidad maravillosa: la autora de alguna manera se puede meter en la mente de una niña para contarnos esta historia, parte vivencial y anecdótica, parte ficción y parte fantasía, y no porque la narradora sea una niña pequeña, esta historia que nos cuenta necesariamente sea en sentido fantástico, pues, al igual que en la película de Guillermo del Toro "el Laberinto del Fauno" el mundo de la fantasía y el de la realidad en la mente de un niño pueden ser el mismo a final de cuentas.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a “ghost story” except I don’t think she’s actually dead! Or if she is, she has simply returned to where she was before. The ghost is reminiscing on her childhood and recounts several incidents in great detail that don’t seem very significant, but that’s how memory is– you’ll randomly remember some moment in the sandbox in which nothing of note happened, nothing that altered your course of development in any way, and yet it’s one of the most vivid memories you have. The little girl is from a well-to-do family in Mexico, her mother is a successful artist with lots of glamorous artsy friends. They have a housekeeper. Her child mind doesn’t truly have a concept of how well-off her family is but she shows inklings of coming to that awareness. The process of a child coming to understand their class position in the world. And no matter where on the wealth spectrum you are, there are pivotal moments where you are jolted by realizing where you/your family stand in all of it.

The girl is paranoid and being chased and haunted by voices. She is in constant fear, but she takes pains to show the reader that she was not a fraidy-cat and was in fact an exuberantly brave and adventurous child. What is chasing her? Not totally clear, but I think it is just Adulthood or fate or inevitability. Throughout the story the girl exhibits an extreme aversion to growing up. She loves her sisters, who are not individuals but a mass (of two), but they suddenly grow alien to her. They have an evil talisman, which is a bra. The girl goes swimming and is horrified to receive male attention, and to see a pretty girl looking back at her in the mirror. Her mind has not caught up with her body. In the end she dies in a pool of blood, which could be interpreted literally, but it could also be that she gets her period and becomes a woman and therefore the child in her dies, and as a woman she can only speak as the ghost of the child she once was.

Throughout the book there is a recurring image of Stigmata, various little wounds or needle pricks, which of course evokes Jesus etc, but a hole dripping blood is evocative of menstruation. The girl doesn’t appear to be particularly religious, but it’s inevitable that growing up in a majority Catholic country and attending Catholic school would likely entail some complexes about purity and womanhood. Last week I went to the Basilica of Guadalupe and the entire time I was like, this is the most Yonic thing I have ever seen in my LIFE, Mary’s head looks like a clitoris and even has a clitoral hood, there is a labia minora and majora with the golden spikes and the folds of her robe, and the inside of her outfit is pink! I know there’s no way in hell I’m the first person to think of this, but the entire time I was in the church and the museum I was like I’m surrounded by vulva images!!! This is insane! When I got home I googled “why does the Virgin Mary look like a vulva” and of course thousands of people had the same thought as me. There are many interpretations to do with sex, fertility, etc, but as it pertains to this book and its dichotomy of ‘before’ with the implicit & unwritten ‘after’ I was compelled by the idea of the vagina as a portal that nearly everyone passes through on their entrance to the world. It’s a gateway of before/after your presence on earth.

I went back and reread the first few pages after thinking about this, and it begins with the girl’s birth. Actually, slightly before that. In the first several sentences she sounds like an untethered soul who has just emerged from the void with no clue where she was before, which must be exactly what it feels like to leave the womb, go through the portal, and find yourself in the bright lights. “Where were we before we got to this point? Didn’t they tell you? Who could tell you if you had nobody to ask? And do you yourself remember? Particularly as you’re not here… And if I keep on? Well, if I keep on, perhaps you’ll show up” As soon as she’s born, she declares that she loves the woman who gave birth to her “as if she were my mother”. I’m sorry to go woo woo mode but it’s like she was a floating soul assigned to this woman Esther, and she loves her because she was assigned to her.

She recounts a happy memory of her father being silly & chasing her saying “I’m not your dad! I’m a Child Snatcher!” The idea of Parents who are Not your Parents is all like Coraline’s OtherMother, or when you’re very small and you accidentally grab the hand of a stranger in the supermarket. When you’re a child you’re tethered to the world by so little, there isn’t much to form your sense of self, and to mistake the identities of the two main people who give you your identity/tether to the world is terrifying. The girl fears being untethered, and in the final scenes before her “death” she is alarmed to find the house empty. I still hate this feeling, when I come home and none of my roommates are there and I don’t know where anyone is. It makes me feel like a small child even though the moments of aloneness and “independence” should be when I feel most adult.

Spoiler alert: in the end the girl’s mother dies. I am very fortunate to have never experienced the loss of a parent, but I would imagine that the usual grief that comes with death is accompanied by an intense severance and a loss of childhood in a new way. I remember the first time I was away from my mom when I was 16 and how that felt like a physical rip, and I had never considered myself someone who was overly attached to my mom. Even if you’re 85 and your mom is 105 when she dies, that is still losing your fucking mom, that is losing the person who gave you life. To lose a mother is to lose that role as someone's child, to become an adult in a new untethered and terrifying way. To endure the loss of your mother while you’re going through puberty and getting your first period, like our narrator? Unbelievably traumatic. A death is excruciating for any family, but this little girl was from a well-to-do family and was therefore very protected and able to remain innocent much longer than many children. Her mother’s death was not only everything that comes with losing a mother, but it seems to be the first truly terrible thing that ever happened in her life, so it was a loss of innocence on that level as well, the fact that such pain can even exist.

Which is why the title “before” is so excellent, because it shows her life when it was innocent and happy, but fate was always swirling around her and there was nothing she could do to stop it. After her mom dies, and after she is no longer a child, she is a different person, a woman, but she still carries the ghost of the child she once was. Her life is cleaved in two.

[Kitty · Rating 1 out of 5]

kui see on Mehhiko kirjanduse üks paremaid näiteid ja auhinnatumaid autoreid (nagu ees- ja järelsõnad jm allikad kinnitavad), siis... ma isegi ei kujuta ette, milline võiks olla keskpärane või halb Mehhiko kirjandus, aga ma järele uurida ka ei plaani.

olin seda iseenesest mitte paksu raamatut juba esimese peatüki keskel pooleli jätmas, sest ma ei saanud MITTE MILLESTKI aru. siin on keegi, kes väidab, et ta on surnud, ja kirjeldab oma sündimist, kusjuures ta ema ei ole tema ema, aga samas on neid (emasid?) kaks tükki. näiteks.

aga kuidagi ikka venitasin teise peatükki välja ja sealt alates läks lugu koherentsemaks - justkui ikkagi oli ühe väikese Mehhiko tüdruku lapsepõlvelugu. kohutavalt palju maagilist realismi küll sinna juurde, teda muudkui jälitasid mingid sammud ja ründasid käärid ja diskrimineeris eukalüptipuu ja ma isegi ei julge mainida maagilist riidekappi (ei olnud nagu Narnia). nagu öeldud, polnud pikk raamat, aga ma ausalt ootasin pikisilmi, et sureks ära kõik, keda lubati, et surevad, sh peategelane (kes, õigus küll, oli algusest peale surnud) ja saaks ühele poole selle looga.

ja ma ikkagi poleks mitte millestki aru saanud, kui poleks lugenud eessõnast vihjeid, et mida see kõik ikkagi tähendada ja sümboliseerida võiks. näiteks et, wait for it, jälitavad sammud on lähenev puberteet ja vajadus naiseks saada. anna kannatust.

samas ma täitsa kujutan ette, kuidas selline asi tõlgitakse ära ja antakse Loomingu Raamatukogus välja ja kõik kiidavad. lihtsalt mulle isiklikult üldse ei meeldinud.

[nethescurial · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed inhabiting this world and was thinking I'd wanted to stay in it for longer, but the final stretch really justifies its form as a novella and any longer might have undermined its impact. But what an impact it makes in such a scant time! A melancholic modernist-feminist folk tale inhabiting the abstracted headspace of its unnamed narrator, with an implicit presence of oppressive Catholicism that gives this a tasteful shade of religious horror that I didn't know I was craving but I clearly have been as the atmosphere here was right up my alley. Boullosa's prose is stunning too and really propels and accentuates the abiding tone. I'd have to reread this to form a clearer picture of the plot, but there's a lot of really cool stuff going on here in approaching themes of death, loss of memory and an irretrievable past that may never have been real at all. Between this, the work of Fernanda Melchor etc. I'm thinking Mexican literature really feels like my lane, definitely going to be exploring more of this country's literary output during 2024 and further.

[Víctor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Entremezclando realismo y fantasía, Antes es una novela que proyecta la vida de una niña que crece en un mundo de arte, monjas, miedos y juegos imaginarios.

Carmen Boullosa resulta una narradora bastante interesante a la hora de contar su niñez, sin embargo hay momentos en los que la fantasía supera a la realidad y el trabajo se vuelve algo surreal, lleno de metáforas e hipérboles, confundiendo en más de una ocasión al lector.

[Dree · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars? Four stars? I am honestly a little (a lot?) confused by this novel. I have read some articles online and have read two very different professional interpretations, and I agree with one of them (the more common one, woo hoo me??).

This is a coming-of-age novel of sorts. Only here a woman is looking back at the fears she had a s a child growing up in an upper middle class/upper class home in Mexico City. She had two older half sisters, and attended a private Catholic school. She was bullied at school and had an odd relationship with her mother (she shared her father with her sisters), who was a professional and respected artist. As a child, the narrator had a lot of fears. She was afraid of night noises (house creaks, etc), and constantly thought she heard footsteps. This is her BEFORE. Before becoming a woman, before having the rules and expectations of womanhood within her class and culture. Childhood was fun ad safety, my interpretation of the footsteps is they were her future--sneaking up on her. Womanhood and adulthood was responsibility, expectations, motherhood, menstruation, bras--the things tat caused her sisters to shut her out as they got older.She knew it was coming for her, but she didn't know what it meant.

[Sookie · Rating 3 out of 5]

If one were to see their life beyond the grave, what would they first want to see? The fondest memories? Deepest secrets? Abominable mistakes? In Before, the protagonist weaves her narration by summoning memories of her childhood beyond the grave that intensely focuses on the relationship she had with her mother and the complexities that adolescence brings. The patriarchal influence the protagonist experiences negates the budding individuality and its exploration. She struggles from within to understand the people and the world around her and in every way how she doesn't fit. The fatal nature of the narration eases into her final moments, macabre in its own regard.

The protagonist experiences extreme disassociation from surrounding and by nature is fearful of many things, thus her actions become uneasy to comprehend. In many ways there is an impulse driving the character (and probably the writer as well), when she reacts to certain situations in a specific way. This made me lose track in several places and the eerie atmosphere didn't help. It could be a translation issue but several sections of the book didn't hold my interest.

[Nevena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great, now I have anxiety.

I pretty much had no idea what was happening the entire time, the writing was super confusing. Really went into this expecting a nice little vintage coming of age story.

All I got was a looming sense of dread.

Fuck.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before is a perfect example of what makes Deep Vellum Press so invaluable in providing access to English translations of modern world writers. Boullosa’s published works spans from poetry through plays to novels, generally focusing on themes of gender and feminism. This novella provides a finely distilled entry into her themes for those who can’t fluently read Spanish and/or are hesitant to commit to any one of her seventeen novels published in Mexico (with some translated and at least once in print in the US).

Billed as “part bildungsroman, part ghost story, part revenge novel,” Before is told by a woman who may — or may not — be dead, in an uncanny narration that disjointedly recollects her past, the relationships that kept her in fear while young through that uncertain journey to adulthood. Like Modiano, Boullosa’s seems particularly focused here on the theme of memory. Whereas the French novelist has often explored this on the collective cultural/national level, Boullosa’s prose dredges through the personal and familial.

“(I feel surrounded on all sides by loose ends of memories I’ve invoked when telling you my story. They all rush up, want my hand, as if they were children, shouting ‘me first,’ and I don’t know which to take first, for fear that one will rush out, decide not to come back in a fit of pique. I lecture them: ‘Memories, be patient, let me take you one at a time to consider you more favorably, please understand that if you come at the right moment you’ll shine better in my eyes, you’ll burst and liberate all the treasures hiding on the backs of your roan mares…’ If only I could write what I relate and devote eternity to reading it…)” — pp. 43 – 44.

Before captures and celebrates the contradictions inherent in these relationships and their associated memories:

“My grandmother looked at me disappointedly because I wasn’t the boy she would have liked. My dad…he didn’t look at me that day or any subsequent day, till I lost count. Then, when I stopped noticing he wasn’t looking at me, he did look and did play with me. He was fantastic to play games with.” — p. 11.

Alongside her family, fear lurks as embodiment of the factor that has most influenced the narrator’s memories and development.
“Afterwards I fell asleep and the [terrifying sounds] that woke up…the ones that woke me up! I was in holy fear of them, a nameless tasteless fear, a fear outside of me, that went beyond me…” — p. 27.

Boullosa paints this fear as as a force that parallels the narrator’s sense of isolation from the universe around her, strengthening the forces of patriarchy that stifle her budding individualism and any self-confidence she might discover.

The melancholy tone of Before and its soupçon of the supernatural make it into an eerie auto-bereavement of how a woman began and how the power of others molded her into something else, an entity distinct from what she could have been.

“Because I’m not what I was like as a child. I am who I was, that’s true, I am or think I have been the same from the day I was born to today, but my eyes are not the same.” — p. 65.

The disjointed, fragmented nature of Before, characteristics inherent in memory, should not dissuade readers. Within the novella length this type of construction is palatable and apt. Those who appreciate intelligent, atmospheric meditations on these themes of womanhood, family, memory, and mortality shouldn’t hesitate to allow Before to speak to them.

[Professor Weasel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! It is not for everyone, but it is exactly my cup of tea. Intensely narrated childhood memories of Mexico, a narrator who may or may not be dead, weird-ass things happening with no explanation (a pet turtle disappears and is possibly eaten; a wardrobe may possess magic properties but not in a Narnia-ish way, a tear in an expensive petticoat is turned into a "stigmata" costume). I loved the urgent, hallucinatory, rambling feel of the narrator's memories- reminiscent of Barbara Comyns' "Sisters by a River," another one of my favourite books. Or even "Boyhood Island" by Knausgaard, though that one has more of a "controlled" feeling to the narration. I loved the disconnected anecdotes and the lack of plot. I like the mystery and lack of resolution of whether or not the woman "Esther" was really the narrator's stepmother or real mother. I loved her paranoid conviction that someone or something (via the sound of footsteps) is constantly following her, which is as creepy as it sounds (is this a horror novel?). I loved how the sight of a newly purchased bra on a bed is made to seem so intensely defamiliarising and distressing. Is this a story about growing up and leaving one's childhood self behind? Is that the "death" that the child narrator has experienced? What a great read.

[Stephany Torres · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5
Parecía una buena premisa, el inicio me hizo querer saber más de la historia pero algunas de las anécdotas de la protagonista parecían irrelevantes para el hilo de la trama, además el estilo de Boullosa lleno de imágenes y metáforas se torna más y más codificado al final

[Itxel Salero · Rating 3 out of 5]

Estoy muy oxidada con la lectura, gracias Carmen Boullosa por reiterarmelo.
Este es un libro ¿Confuso? porque somos guiados a través de los recuerdos de una niña, que nos habla de su familia, infancia, inquietudes y temores, quizá por eso parece que nos arrastra una especie de flujo de consciencia cuya mayor constante son los ruidos que persiguen a nuestra protagonista hasta llevarla a una angustia permanente.
Es un ejercicio interesante, sobretodo si pensamos en nuestra propia infancia y como pequeñas cosas detonan memorias y sensaciones que creíamos perdidas, de alguna manera, esas versiones pasadas, también son fantasmas qué llevamos con nosotros.

[Sophia Villanueva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un estilo narrativo muy peculiar, muy poético y con el tono seguro de la sabiduría de la infancia.
Para mí uns persona adulta que logra reproducir el tono infantil es una persona que no ha olvidado lo fundamental de la vida, que no ha olvidado cómo observar el mundo y al resto de las personas; que no ha olvidado maravillarse y cuestionar. Siento que esta autora lo logra perfecto contándonos una historia que a ratos es divertida, a ratos preocupante y muy constantemente es indecifrable y hasta cierto punto caótica.
Definitivamente no me esperaba el final y no lo entendí, pero creo que la intención no era entenderlo, sino provocar ese sentimiento de desasosiego para concluir lo que, en mi opinión, fue una gran historia.
Hay fragmentos que me quedo por ser sobre dos objetos que yo valoro mucho y tiendo a tener en mayor número que una persona promedio: el de las tijeras y sus categorías y el de las piedras de raza vs las callejeras. Muy ingeniosos!!

[World Literature Today]

"Before is a small gem that brings to mind two other gems of Mexican literature: Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo and Carlos Fuentes’s Aura. This comparison is not overstated. Like its predecessors, death is a central theme in Boullosa’s novella. Before differs, however, in the playful, sometimes irreverent way in which the protagonist confronts this macabre topos. Rather than oppose life to death, as did Rulfo and Fuentes, Boullosa opposes childhood to adulthood, which can be infinitely more uncertain and frightening. In Boullosa’s binary, puberty is the dividing line. Through this paradigm, the title Before acquires new meanings." - George Henson

This book was reviewed in the January/February 2017 issue of World Literature Today magazine. Read the full review by visiting our website:

https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/...

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I finished this book last night, I didn't like it at all. But this morning, I realized I couldn't stop thinking about it; it was stuck in my head.

I think I took the book too literally at first, as I admittedly do pretty often. What's more, I felt that the book had perhaps lost some of its magic in translation. But, like leftover spaghetti, the flavors melded together in the refrigerator of my mind. Either way, for a bite-sized story picked up on a whim, it had a powerful ability to make me think - and for that I will give it an extra star.

"As we live we are hardly alive... To relive what we've seen by the lucid light of memory would be unbearable and, as far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't be brave enough."

[Laura Bittman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn’t in love with the journey but now that I’m done I just keep thinking about it and want to go back! I read the intro after I finished, which called the style “teetering between humor and panic”. DEAD ON. Definitely will re-read at some point.

[Karly Salguero · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
"Antes" nos narra la historia de una morrilla q quién sabe cómo se llama pero ps nos está contando su infancia privilegiada y rara y loka. Tiene dos hermanas mayores, una mamá a la cual nunca le dice "mamá", y un papá común y korriente kajaja, y ps la vdd es una morrilla bien ignorada x su familia y nomás nos va narrando su vida y lo que vivió cuando era niña.

Hay un "plot twist" (o eso creo) q la vdd descubrí a mitad del libro jajaja pero está chidito igual. Tarde como un mes en acabarlo, y eso q está súper chiquito, pero esq aunque está entretenido se tornaba aburrido a ratos y lo dejaba de leer por días. Igual el final valió la pena la vdd, me gustó. Siempre disfrutó mucho las narraciones de infancias.

[Leyendoalmundooficial · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Yo no sería capaz, no tengo valor, de volver a vivir lo que viví de niña. Mis recuerdos me dan miedo, traicionan la serenidad de mi memoria”.

Dicen que la infancia es la mejor etapa de la vida, eso dicen los adultos que añoran volver a vivir sin tantas responsabilidades ni preocupaciones, con ganas de jugar sin ser juzgados. Pero no todas las infancias son felices, Recordar puede ser como quitarte una costra, puede volver a sangrar, aunque el dolor no será el mismo. También existen los buenos recuerdos.

La narradora nos cuenta cómo fue su vida de “antes” cuando era niña, cómo fue crecer acompañada de sus hermanas, el paso por la primaria y todo lo que involucra como el aprendizaje y el bullying.

[Cristobal · Rating 4 out of 5]

A medio camino entre un poema, un libro de cuentos y una novela corta. La poética del libro es excelente, las anécdotas son buenas pero la cohesión como novela corta deja algo que desear.

A continuación, resumo una parte que me gustó mucho:

"La geografía del ruido... El léxico sonoro era sólo una pequeña parte del mundo desverbal que inventé o habité de niña. Lo que pasaba por el tamiz de las palabras era el mundo que compartía con los otros: "pásame el azúcar, aviéntame la pelota...

...El universo desverbal era mucho más profuso, tenía muchos más habitantes, situaciones, mucho más mundo... A cada palabra correspondía un mundo sin verbo."

[Jan Priddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an odd little story. Perhaps I should have liked it better it I had recalled how it ends. I did recall reading an excerpt and finding it intriguing enough that I ordered a copy. I related to the protagonist's feeling of disconnection and general isolation. That was how I most often felt as a young child.

Perhaps the translation let me down? Perhaps her claim not to be timid while at the same time she is so very afraid of so very many things?

I think I will not read it a second time.

[Amelia Peniche · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maravillosa! La novela transcurre alrededor de Los años 60 en la Ciudad de México, narrada en primera persona en la voz de Carmen una niña que cuenta parte de su historia hasta llegar a la pubertad. Desde esa voz infantil podemos vivir las alegrías, miedos y angustias que vive la protagonista, que van desde los terrores nocturnos, la vida con una madre que siente cercana pero al mismo tiempo distante y por último cómo desde su mente infantil lidia con la muerte.
La obra tiene un tinte de realismo mágico que a mí me encantó.

[Mariana Rosas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es la primera vez que leo un relato de infancia con el que puedo identificarme tanto. Cuando se es una niña sensible, quizás hipersensible, lo desconocido se traduce a una enorme angustia. La imaginación se desborda y el miedo es imposible de explicar a los demás.

Quizás lo único que no me gustó fue que ciertas anécdotas me parecieron un poco sobrantes a comparación de la gran mayoría. La primera mitad es algo irregular, la segunda es brutal.

Gracias Carmen Boullosa por tu honesto testimonio.

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una historia de crecimiento que trasciende la vida. Una niña que cuenta la historia familiar, su infancia y los extraños vínculos con sus padres, con sus hermanas y con ella misma.
Crece en una casa de privilegios, pero donde de pronto no se sabe cuál es el lugar correcto para estar. Es una propuesta interesante en la que el personaje central va detallando la percepción de un entorno cambiante gracias a la fatalidad de la vida. Cómo transitar de la bonanza al lado oscuro de la tragedia.

[Edward Sanchez · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would describe this as a stream of conscious read with an underlying narrative. There were some saving graces to this book when the author speaks to the reader to give some explanation about what she's talking about.
My favorite line in the book: "Well, I know as well as you do that a tree can't move, that a tree has roots and is stuck there, but you don't know about a tree dead set on going against a girl" (p35-36).

[Eva · Rating 1 out of 5]

Got about a third into this, but even though it's slim I decided I won't finish it. The narration is too loose and running wild, missing structure between long rambling sentences. And even though there's a gripping coming-of-age story somewhere in there (so the back cover promises) I am not feeling this.

Reminded me a bit about my problems with Eve Out of Her Ruins.

[Craig Duckett · Rating 5 out of 5]

A GREAT coming-of-age story from a point-of-view completely different than my own: a white, male, North American, upbringing. I'll admit it, it actually brought me to tears, but then again, I'm old, and a softy, and my shell of masculinity has been scoured off after a 44 year relationship with the same woman and 33 years with the same daughter. I HIGHLY recommend it.