The Iliac crest

The title of award-winning author, translator, and critic Rivera Garza's deftly translated, elegant little novel refers to that part of the hip bone that can be seen when slender people wear low-slung jeans, and it also invokes the Iliad. On a dark and stormy night, our unreliable narrator opens the door to a mysterious woman, Amparo Dávila. When the Betrayed the guest he was expecting shows up and makes common cause with Dávila the False One to the point of coinventing their own baby-talk language, the unnamed narrator becomes obsessed with seeking answers. But his journey of discovery only stirs up more questions. Rivera Garza has constructed an exquisite homage to the Mexican writer Amparo Dávila, echoing her themes of reality, sanity, and sexual identity in an eerie and mildly dystopian setting. Dávila herself has all but disappeared from the canon; this tale rescues her alongwith a faithful legion of impostors called the Emissaries. Rivera Garza's novel is a challenging and satisfying literary experience. Familiarity with Mexico will enrich the reading experience but is not a prerequisite.--Martinez, Sara Copyright 2017 Booklist

This astounding and thought-provoking novel from Rivera Garza (No One Will See Me Cry) opens during a stormy night: two women visit an unnamed narrator at his oceanside home and gradually unravel his life. The first woman, whom the narrator has never met before, shares the name of neglected Mexican author Amparo Dávila. The second woman arrives shortly after and promptly faints-it's the narrator's former partner, whom he refers to as the Betrayed. The narrator, who works at a hospital for terminal patients ("My life among the dead was boring, to be sure, but at least it had the merit of being routine"), becomes increasingly disturbed by the two women, who claim to know his secret. Amparo, meanwhile, says a patient at the narrator's hospital stole her manuscript, and she wants the narrator to retrieve it for her. This leads the narrator on a journey through his unnamed country (though it's clearly Mexico) that fractures his sense of reality and shifts his understanding of his own gender. Rivera Garza's novel succeeds as a suspenseful psychological horror story in the vein of a David Lynch film or Ingmar Bergman's Persona, as a dissolver of the space between genders, and as a challenge to the cultural erasure of the real-life Dávila. The result is mind-bending. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.