The Woman from Uruguay
by Pedro Mairal
Translated by Jennifer Croft
Argentinian author Lucas Pereyra has passed his 40s and displays all the symptoms of a mid-life crisis. He is suffering from writer’s block, his finances are in bad shape, and he suspects that his wife Catalina is having an affair. But a turn of fortune beckons. Lucas is due a substantial payment on foreign sales of his work, and he plans to travel from Buenos Aires where he resides, across the River Plate, to Montevideo, in order to smuggle the sum in cash back to Argentina, dodging taxes. If he succeeds, Lucas can then settle down, concentrate on his writing, and start to gather the lost pieces of his life.
But Lucas also has another reason to visit Montevideo: meeting the young woman of the title – Guerra – with whom he had gotten acquainted at a writers’ event. His infatuation with Guerra gives Lucas a taste of youth, and his increasingly desperate attempts to seduce her are worthy of a love-struck teenager.
It is
hardly a spoiler to state that things will not go exactly as planned. The
novel(la) plays out over Lucas’s eventful day, giving us an insight into his
psyche. He is, obviously a flawed character. Even a middle-aged male reader such as I, while
more forgiving of the protagonist’s foibles, recognise that Lucas can be ego(t)istic,
vain, sexist and, in some of his choices, incredibly short-sighted. Yet, there is a thread of endearing
self-irony running through his monologues, turning Lucas into a tragi-comic
figure as we hurtle towards the novel’s bittersweet conclusion. The narrative voice is perfectly pitched, and
brilliantly conveyed in Jennifer Croft’s translation. Pedro Mairal mixes suspense and comedy, philosophical insight and slapstick to create an entertaining and well-observed novel.
No comments:
Post a Comment