Frances Riddle

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Time of the Flies by Claudia Piñeiro tr. Frances Riddle

Women in Translation Month

15 years after killing her lover Ines is released from prison. A dark, intelligent mystery with a surprise collective voice

I read Claudia Piñeiro’s latest novel for #WITMonth. It is from the Charco Bundle 2024, a subscription where they send you nine titles, the best of contemporary Latin American fiction they are publishing throughout the year. It’s one of my absolute favourite things, an annual literary gift to me, surprise books that I haven’t chosen myself. And they are so good!

Also, it’s August. Women in Translation month. So I’m prioritising books in that category, another of my favourite things. World travel and storytelling through literature.

Claudia Piñeiro is fast becoming one of my favourite Latin American authors. This is her third book I have read. Elena Knows was Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022; it was intriguing, but the next one, A Little Luck was even better. More engaging emotionally, full of suspense, an immersive read.

Review

Time of the Flies has it all. The more I consider it, I find it is literary brilliance.

A past crime, a slow burning mystery, a complicated mother daughter relationship, a developing friendship between women who are used to not trusting anyone, unwanted motherhood, a dilemma that might be an opportunity or a trap. A sociological commentary on the lives, loves, wrath and resentments of women and thought provoking references to other works of literature, from classic mythology to contemporary feminism.

Female Friendships, Fumigations and Investigations

Inés, the mother of Laura ( a role she is trying now to deny) has been released from prison 15 years after killing her husband’s lover. She has set up a pest fumigation and private investigation business with fellow friend and ex inmate Manca.

FFF (flies, females and fumigations) a business run by women for women. Non-toxic pest control.

The two friends and business partners work separately but they consult each other when a case requires it, although Inés knows more about autopsies, fingerprints, and criminal profiles than Manca does about cockroaches.

A new client makes Inés an offer that might be an opportunity or a trap, she considers whether to pursue the opportunity and Manca, her friend and business partner investigates the client and becomes suspicious when she finds there is a connection between this woman and someone Inés knows.

She curses her fate and whatever recommendation or flyer that landed her at Susan Bonar’s house in the first place to be confronted by a part of her past that she does not deny but prefers to forget.

The Collective Voice, And Medea

Then there is a collective voice of feminist disharmony that enters the narrative every few chapters to opinionate on what just happened, if there is an issue that women might have an opinion on.

It’s never a consensus, it illustrates the difficulty of any collective voice that doesn’t resonate together, and demonstrates the aspects being considered on a topic. Other voices are quoted that challenge:

“There are many kinds of feminism in the world, many different political stances within the social movement and different critiques of our culture.” Marta Lamas Acoso. I don’t agree. Me neither. I do.

Each of these chapters begins with an epigram from Medea by Euripides (a Greek tragedy/play from 431 BC), that sets the tone for the theme that will be discussed. Like our protagonist Inés, Medea too, took vengeance against her philandering husband Jason, by murdering his new wife and worse, her own two sons.

This quote below precedes a discussion on the issue of one woman killing another woman, whether that is femicide. Equally interesting quotes from Rebecca Solnit and Toni Morrison are also referred to in the text.

Medea by Euripides A Greek Tragedy, Time of the Flies Claudia Pineiro Collective voice of women feminist issues

Chorus:

‘Unhappy woman, 

Feu, feu [Ah, ah] unhappy for your miseries.

Where will you turn? To what host for shelter?’

Once you realise what the collective voice is doing, it provides a pause in the narrative and allows other voices to engage with the reader. In case you missed that a significant issue had just appeared in the text you’re going to be confronted with it here. It doesn’t distract from the story (well, yes it does initially), however the chapters are only a couple of pages long. It adds depth to the narrative making this more of a literary novel, it pushes the reader to consider the issues, which some readers may not appreciate, but it is likely they will remember.

What About Those Flies

Inés sees a fly. In her eye. It comes and goes, it is a part of her. The doctor has checked it out and explained it away, but for her, it is significant. She understands the brain’s suppression mechanism that will make it disappear.

If she had to define it, she’d say it’s the feeling that there’s something fluttering around her head that she can’t catch, that there’s something right in front of her eyes that she can’t see. But it’s definitely not a fly.

Flies ascend in the narrative, they have a champion in Inés and we will even come across numerous literary references to them, some that hold them more in esteem than others. They are also that niggle that she feels, something that wants attention that she is not seeing.

Even Manca made a contribution to my literary education. IN her efforts to encourage me to write, she gave me a novel (I don’t read novels Manca); Like Flies from Afar, by one Kike Ferrari. Manca doesn’t read either, not even the instructions on how to use her appliances, but she went to the bookstore and asked for ‘one about flies’, and the bookseller said: ‘The fly as a methaphor, right? I’ll bring you one of the best crime novels of the year.’

(…)
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The novel has its central mystery that is slowly unravelled, while it explores the complexity of the mother daughter relationship, the effect of abandonment and absence and the promise that a new generation can bring to old wounds.
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So, Those Ellipsis’s

Though it was a slow read for me, it really got me in its grip and there was so much to consider beyond the mystery, like the collective voice, which makes the reader consider issues from different points of view.

Then there are the ellipsis’s. The pause, things left out, the reader’s imagination engaged, what are they? Pause for thought indeed. Usually present when there is dialogue, they make the reader consider why they are there. Are parts of the dialogue unimportant? Are they an invitation to imagine what was said in between? Whatever the intention of the author, the effect is to awaken the reader to their presence and make you think about the why.

By the time I finished this, I absolutely loved it, for everything. For its central storytelling, its reflective invitation, the literary references, the collective voice and its ability to keep me entertained and interested and intrigued. A quirky, enticing, novel that praises flies and finds all these intriguing literary references to them. It is a cornucopia of elements amidst great storytelling.

Further Reading

Read an Extract of Time of the Flies by Claudia Piñeiro

Actualidad Literatura: The Time of the Flies <<El tiempo de las moscas>> reviewed by Juan Ortiz

Author, Claudia Piñeiro

Born in Burzaco, Buenos Aires in 1960, Claudia Piñeiro is a best-selling author, known internationally for her crime novels.

She has won numerous national and international prizes, including the Pepe Carvalho Prize, the LiBeraturpreis for Elena Knows and the prestigious Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize for Las grietas de Jara (A Crack in the Wall). Many of her novels have been adapted for the big screen, including Elena Knows (Netflix).

Piñeiro is the third most translated Argentinean author after Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar. She’s also a playwright and scriptwriter (including popular Netflix series The Kingdom). Her novel Elena Knows was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize.

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January by Sara Gallardo (1958) tr. Frances Riddle, Maureen Shaughnessy (2023)

January is a slim novella, considered to be a revelatory, pioneering masterpiece about a short period in the life of a 16-year-old Argentine girl living in a rural area, whose life trajectory is radically changed in a day. Now, for the first time, translated from Spanish into English.

Breaking the Silence, Exploring the Consequence

With echoes of Edith Wharton’s Summer , this radical feminist novel broke the silence around abortion to reshape the way women’s bodies and rights were perceived in 20th-century Argentina.

A radical feminist text, January was the first Argentine novel to represent rape from the survivor’s perspective and to explore the life-threatening risks pregnancy posed, in a society where abortion was both outlawed and taboo.

They talk about the harvest but they don’t know that by then there’ll be no turning back, Nefer thinks. Everyone here and everyone else will know by then, and they won’t be able to stop talking about it. Her eyes cloud with worry; she slowly lowers her head and herds a small flock of crumbs across the worn oilcloth.

A 16 year old girl in a predicament, not of her own making discovers she is pregnant, but not by the young man she dreams of. She is the daughter of peasant farm workers and has limited options, but will pursue them all the same, in order to try and avoid the inevitable, forced outcome that awaits her once her secret becomes known.

A pregnant teenager imagines death rather than forced marriage
Photo F.Capetillo Pexels.com

She is just of an age where she begins to notice and feel something for someone around her, but her virtue is stolen by another. Instead of imagining love, she imagines death, and wonders if this might be when her will finally see her.

She no longer cares about anything besides this thing that consumes her days and nights, growing inside her like a dark mushroom, and she wonders if it shows in her eyes as they remain fixed on her worn-out espadrilles, two little gray boats on the tile floor, or in her hands crossed in her lap, or in her hair burned by the perm.

The novella follows her panic, her attempt to find resolution without support, her symptoms, her desperation to seek absolution, her confession, her realisation of the terrible consequence, the life sentence, the marriage plot.

This thought floods her with a tide of anxiety as she remembers her secret. A sense of impotence rises to her throat, as if time has become something solid and she can almost hear its unstoppable current conspiring with her own body, which has betrayed her, tossing her to the mercy of the days.

She lives in rural Argentina, a conservative catholic environment, an unruly place for a young girl.

What will happen to her in this place that reveres the cloth, that judges and shames girls regardless of their innocence?

Further Reading

The New York Review of Books: Nefer’s Mission by Lily Meyer

The New Yorker: The Abortion Plot: A newly translated novel by the Argentinean writer Sara Gallardo provides a missing link in the history of abortion literature, by S. C. Cornell

Sara Gallardo: Recently rediscovered Argentine writer by Jordana Blejmar (University of Liverpool) & Joanna Page (University of Cambridge).

it is perhaps her abiding concern for the ‘Other’ – marginalized, solitary characters, women, animals, monsters, even elements of nature – that gives Gallardo’s literature its most powerful political dimension…

Author, Sara Gallardo

Sara Gallardo was born in Argentina in 1931 to an aristocratic Catholic family. She became a journalist in 1950 and was twenty-seven years old when her powerful debut January was published in 1958.

She grew up in Buenos Aires in a family of men so famous there are streets named after them all over Argentina (all key figures in the constitution of the Argentine nation): her grandfather Ángel Gallardo was a civil engineer and politician; her great-grandfather Miguel Cané was a journalist, senator, and diplomat; and her great-great-grandfather Bartolomé Mitre was president of Argentina from 1862-1868.

By the time she died in 1988 she had published more than a dozen books, including collections of short stories and essays. Gallardo has been compared to Lucia Berlin or Shirley Jackson.

January is considered required reading across Argentina.

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Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro tr. Frances Riddle

With A Little Luck now available in English, I’m catching up by reading the word of mouth sensation Elena Knows, which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022 and won the Premio Pepe Carvalho Prize for crime fiction in 2019. According to the newspaper La Nación, Claudia Piñeiro is the third most translated Argentinean author, after Borges and Cortázar.

Claudia Piñeiro does seem like an interesting author to watch, taking the convention crime fiction genre and giving it a shake up by focusing on social issues and ethical questions, in particular related to the way women’s bodies have been and are used and abused.

Also reading this for #20booksofsummer23 and getting a head start on August’s #WITMonth, reading women in translation, because that’s my favourite corner of the reading world to be looking for literary gems!

What Does Elena Know That No One Else Seems to?

Elena has just learned her daughter Rita is dead. That it occurred on the same afternoon she booked Elena into her boyfriend’s mother’s salon for “the works”.

It was a rainy afternoon and this is the main reason Elena knows there was foul play. Because her daughter was afraid of lightning and because a mother just knows.

No one knows as much about her daughter as she does, because she’s her mother, or was her mother. Motherhood, Elena thinks, comes with certain things, a mother knows her child, a mother knows, a mother loves.That’s what they say, that’s how it is.

A Rigid Point of View

We see everything from her ‘eyes cast downward’ viewpoint, as she heads out one day to get answers from someone she hasn’t seen in 20 years.

Elena’s body is debilitated by Parkinson’s, so in between pills, she can move more easily.

Photo by RAFAEL QUATY on Pexels.com

Rita was there when he first explained the disease. Rita, who’s now dead. He told them that Parkinson’s was degradation of the cells of the nervous system. And both she and her daughter disliked that word. Degradation.And Dr Benegas must’ve noticed, because he quickly tried to explain. And he said, an illness of the central nervous system that degrades, or mutates, or changes, or modifies the nerve cells in such a way that they stop producing dopamine. And then Elena learned that when her brain orders her feet to move, for example, the order only reaches her feet if the dopamine takes it there. Like a messenger, she thought that day. So Parkinson’s is Herself and dopamine is the messenger.

The novel is told over the course of one day, in three sections: Morning (second pill), Afternoon (third pill) and Evening (fourth pill). The absence of the first pill in the narrative is a reminder as to how dependent she is on the medication and how controlling it is over her every movement, how it restricts her freedom, her vision, her ability to do anything. She is enslaved to those pills and that body.

As the pill begins to wear off, the risk of her becoming stuck increases, as her body becomes less manageable, there is no room for error or miscalculated judgement, if she is to make the journey she has planned. There are moments when she has to wait for the pill to take effect, these must be carefully timed.

Proprietary Attitudes Over Humans

She is off to get help in her attempt to investigate her daughter’s death, thinking she can use the ‘able body’ of someone she sets out on this day to meet. There is a reason why she believes that this person will help her, where no other can, and she will go to all kinds of lengths, despite the debilitating obstacles of her own body, in order to have an audience with them.

She won’t be able to do it by herself because she doesn’t have a body. Not now that the dethroned king and Herself are in charge. Even if she uses all the tricks in the book, she won’t be able to uncover the truth unless she recruits another body to help her. A different body that can act in her place. That can investigate, ask questions, walk, look directly into people’s eyes. A body that will obey Elena’s orders.

The novel explores this idea of how people impose or claim agency over another’s body and what they sentence them to, in so doing; or how they believe they “know” another just because they gave birth to or mothered them, or that God gave them some kind of right to be so knowing.

Elena’s body is in the end stages, but in her mind, she is still coming-of-age.

Claudia Piñeiro, Author

Claudia Piñeiro is best known for her crime novels, which are bestsellers in Argentina, Latin America and around the world. Four of her novels have been adapted and made into films.

As an author and scriptwriter for television, Piñeiro has already won numerous national and international prizes, among them the renowned German LiBeraturpreis for Elena Knows and the prestigious Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize for Las grietas de Jara (A Crack in the Wall).

Her 8 episode series The Kingdom (2021) currently showing on Netflix, sparked controversy in 2021 for its portrayal of the Evangelical church in Argentina.

More recently, Piñeiro has become a very active figure in the fight for the legalisation of abortion in Argentina and for the legal recognition of writers as workers. Her fiction stems from the detective novel but has recently turned increasingly political, taking a broader, more critical gaze at corruption, injustice, community divisions and other dysfunctions of contemporary society. 

Further Reading

What’s On My Bookshelf: Claudia Piñeiro talks of books that inspired her career including The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg, Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick, The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel García Márquez, To the End of the Land by David Grossman, A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf and The Buenos Aires Affair by Manuel Puig.

International Booker Prize Interview: Claudia Piñeiro, ‘I’ve always been very rebellious’

“I always begin writing my books with an image that acts like a trigger. I allow this image to steep in my mind, the characters then begin to speak, to reveal their conflicts. It’s like a tangled ball of wool that I unwind bit by bit. In the case of Elena Knows this image was a woman, a woman in her kitchen at home, sitting bent over in a chair waiting for the pill she’s taken to take effect so she can get up. This was the trigger image. I should also acknowledge that this diseased body of the character Elena is inspired by the body of my mother, who suffered from the same illness, Parkinson’s.”  Claudia Piñeiro