Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this unflinching English-language debut from Ecuadorian writer Ponce, a 38-year-old woman wrestles with life-changing decisions. The author adopts a stream-of-consciousness style for the unnamed narrator, who enjoys roller-skating in Ecuador with her girlfriends and drinking in bars. With her marriage on the rocks, the narrator develops a torrid affair with a stranger who resides in a cave-like hovel, coated in vines, moss, and mud. Their attraction is intense and visceral; while on her period, her blood heightens his desire. After her husband announces he's leaving her, he informs her that he's also having an affair. Her own affair, which is purely physical, leaves her unsatisfied and lonely. While despondent after realizing she's in love with the cave dweller, she drives drunk and believes she hits a man with her car, which destabilizes her. She seeks refuge at a retreat that temporarily salves her heartache over her lover and guilt over the accident, though she wonders if the crash was a hallucination. Ponce brings striking candor to the narrator's ambivalence as she undergoes a series of emotional transformations, and Booker expertly captures the rhythm and velocity of Ponce's prose, which skims along the surface before plunging into startling depths, such as this scene with the narrator and her husband: "we talked about friends, filed a few complaints, and then he said he'd met someone. I asked her name and then came the quiet that warns of the greatest danger." Ponce packs a powerful punch. Agent: Sophie Savary, Sophie Savary Literary. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In award-winning Ecuadorian author Ponce's first novel appearing in English, an unnamed narrator whose marriage is coming apart explores her sexuality and tumultuous state of mind in language so visceral you can taste it. The breakup is occurring not for the usual reasons, even with affairs on both sides, but because she is tired of waiting for something better to happen. Initially, she throws herself into an affair with a man living in a sort of mossy cave, with the sex here (as elsewhere) described in unabashed, moment-by-moment detail. After aimless drinking and drugging, she imagines that she has hit and killed an older man (despite a lack of evidence) and ends up at a retreat, followed by more affairs, particularly with a man she's befriended through correspondence. Strikingly, the swoop of mostly unparagraphed narrative is at once intensely interior and intensely physical (and not just regarding sex; "I felt like it was snowing inside my fingers"). But finding what she wants isn't easy. VERDICT A fascinating study of a life coming undone, as much about the writing as the content; just not for the prim or action-oriented.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A woman adrift in her late 30s contends with a complex constellation of romantic relationships and their effects on her internal and bodily identity. The unnamed narrator, a 38-year-old Ecuadorian woman, is at something of a crossroads: married to a man from whom she's long been emotionally dissociated; technically childless (a qualifier that isn't fully explained until later in the book); and stuck in a hazy reality divorced from meaning. For her, "anything that isn't falling in love has never merited much attention," and she spends her evenings in an adrenaline-fueled haze, drinking with friends at bars and warehouses. Soon, she meets an enigmatic filmmaker and enters into an all-consuming, meticulously described relationship. Though the contours of the man's psyche are never totally clear--he's quiet, mysterious, and has a small daughter--the protagonist's bond with him is profound, and for the duration of their relationship his house is a life-encapsulating cave, his bed "the bed of the world in its disorder and plenitude." The relationship is simultaneously ecstatic and emotionally devastating, and when it falters, she has an emotional crisis, getting into accidents and meeting strange men while seemingly searching for a deeper source of meaning. As her sense of turmoil builds, she's compelled to move to Spain to live with M, a poet with whom she's carried on a lengthy correspondence. There, she must make a decision that encompasses the ownership of her body, her relationship to men, and her direction in life. In this English-language debut, as translated by Booker, Ponce's prose is rich and atmospheric, and almost every scene operates on multiple emotional layers; this makes the narrator fully palpable despite the omission of certain biographical details. Ponce masterfully shows how despair and desire collide within one person, creating an entire universe of deeply felt emotional consequences. Though the plot is sometimes meandering--and a fair portion of the action is driven by the protagonist's paramours, leading to an occasional sense of passivity--the novel's searing exploration of unrequited love makes up for it. Dark, beautiful, and a little disturbing. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
