Still Born: Guadalupe Nettel

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GN: I think it is not the place of literature to provide answers but to ask the right questions and to invite readers to reflect. Beautifully insightful and timely, Still Born is the story of 2 career-driven, adventurous friends in their mid-30s, living in Mexico City. My friends, for instance, could be divided into two groups of equal size: those who considered relinquishing their freedom and sacrificing themselves for the sake of the species, and those who were prepared to accept the disgrace heaped on them by society and family as long as they could preserve their autonomy. Estas tres mujeres son un ejemplo de fortaleza a su manera y también un retrato vivo de situaciones comunes sobre la maternidad, la amistad y el cuidado.

‘Still Born,’ by Guadalupe Nettel, complicates the idea of

I’m not a widow, I’m more like a divorced woman who restarted her life, but I know what it is like to live in a violent relationship with someone with whom you have children. Heart-gripping, real, and hugely thought-provoking, I find myself still staring into space trying to absorb the unexpected emotional whirlwinds that fall upon these women. Deeply intelligent, Still Born is a propulsive novel with a depth of feeling so woven into the language that it never feels worn or applied. Unlike my mother’s generation, for whom it was abnormal not to have children, many women in my own age group chose to abstain. As soon he has closed his own front door, the decibel level increases as he starts shouting to complain about what’s for lunch.This is not just something that we just read about in newspapers, very often it’s a friend’s friend or sibling that has been murdered by her partner and many times these guys are not imprisoned or even put on trial.

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The guy who killed them said that they were whores who deserved it and that if he was set free, he’d do it again. Instead, Laura serves as witness and interpreter, establishing a buffer between the reader and the book’s harrowing events. I decided to tell it from the friend’s point of view, because I wanted friendship to be at the centre of this novel: friendship as a bond that supports and saves us in the worst circumstances.Two best friends share an aversion to “the human shackles” of motherhood, only to discover that life has other plans.

Guadalupe Nettel’s Searing New Novel Asks: What Makes a Guadalupe Nettel’s Searing New Novel Asks: What Makes a

When I wrote this novel, thousands of women were on the streets throughout the country protesting against gender violence. Touching down in far-off countries I knew very little about, crossing them by land, on foot or in ramshackle buses, and discovering their culture and cuisine were amongst the pleasures of this world which it never even occurred to me to consider giving up.Laura, la gran amiga de Alina, refiere el conflicto de esta pareja, mientras reflexiona sobre el amor y su lógica a veces incomprensible, pero también sobre las estrategias que los seres humanos inventamos para superar la frustración. I felt a huge sense of relief that I had encountered a work of art about ambivalence in mothering which encompassed a true authentic range of emotions and curiosities – vanity, aggression, jealousy and selfishness – with sanguine acceptance, as well as the beautiful and difficult project of giving and sustaining love which marks all our lives, mothers or otherwise. Who has not plunged headlong into an irreconcilable love affair knowing it has no future, and clinging to a glimmer of hope as flimsy as a blade of grass? Nettel, translated by Rosalind Harvey, devotes tight prose to the complicated structure of identity around being (or not being) a mother and explores the constant negotiating women must do in the process. Seeing what is happening in Mexico, or in countries like Iran, reading what is at stake in the US, I realise how difficult the journey was to get to where we are, and how easily the rights that we have achieved can be stolen from us.

Still Born: Nettel, Guadalupe, Harvey, Rosalind Still Born: Nettel, Guadalupe, Harvey, Rosalind

Thankfully, this book is honest and real with characters behaving in a rational and realistic manner. Laura is so dedicated to this decision that she takes the unusual step to be sterilised at a young age. Incredibly gripping narrative about two friends who initial shared views on leading childless life are challenged as they find themselves thrown into situations that only unpredictability of life can present. Rosalind Harvey is a literary translator and educator from Bristol and now based in Coventry in the West Midlands.Much of the language used by the lead character, Laura, is purposefully clinical and devoid of emotion.