A Beautiful Young Woman

by Julián López

Overview

“A moving story . . . powerful, celebratory, and loving.” —Laura Cardona, La Nación

Set in the midst of Argentina's military dictatorship, a poignant and evocative debut novel about family, political violence, and the consequences of dissidence

As political violence escalates around them, a young boy and his single mother live together in an apartment in Buenos Aires—which has recently been taken over by Argentina’s military dictatorship. When the boy returns home one day to find his mother missing (or “disappeared”), the story fractures, and the reader encounters him fully grown, consumed by the burden of his loss, attempting to reconstruct the memory of his mother.   
 
By leaping forward in time, the boy—now a man—subtly gives shape to his mother’s activism, and in the process recasts the memories from his childhood. The result is a stylistically masterful and deeply moving novel marking the English-language debut of one of Argentina's most promising writers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781612196824
Publisher:	Melville House Publishing
Publication date:	11/14/2017
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Julián López was born in Buenos Aires in 1965. He is a poet, actor, and director of the contemporary Argentine literary association Carne Argentina. A Beautiful Young Woman is his first novel. 

Samuel Rutter is a writer and translator from Melbourne, Australia, currently pursuing an MFA at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Editorial Reviews

López's book can be seen as a kind of counterpart to Patricio Pron's 2011 novel, My Fathers' Ghost Is Climbing in the Rain, in which a son uncovers his father's role in a leftist group during the same dark period in Argentina's history. But where Pron is forensic in his approach, López is sensual. The narrator's descriptions of his mother are longing, even erotic at times, and the most moving passages describe his small, often futile attempts at intimacy, like taking a breath after she walks by "as a way of embracing her."

The New York Times Book Review - Chris Power

11/06/2017
In López’s enticing debut novel, a man examines his childhood with his mother in hopes of better understanding her later disappearance in the charged political atmosphere of Buenos Aires in what appears to be the late 1970s following the military coup. The unnamed narrator combs short scenes for meaning in a voice that is sultry, longing, and defined by the abandonment that later fractures him: as he recalls, “I tried to push myself toward a childhood without deceit, without suspicions, but the truth is that I didn’t want to be there.” Furtive phone calls and his mother’s habit of leaving him alone with near-strangers lend further mystery to her entanglements and her life beyond her son. The narrator is simultaneously the young boy, frightened and alone, and the grown man, haunted by what he can neither remember nor explain. This is a detailed, moving meditation on a mother’s imperfect love, and an attempt to understand both her disappearance and who she was before disappearing. Though delicately written, it’s compulsive in its quest, never trying to neaten the messiness of grief. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"This evocative and moving debut... is a fascinating and intricately woven examination of family, political unrest, and the power of memory in shaping who we are."—SIGNATURE READS

“A beautifully written story of the love between a mother and son in Buenos Aires, which has been taken over by Argentina’s military dictatorship… It’s a stunning debut about family, violence, and consequences.”—HELLO GIGGLES

“[A] heartbreaking and moving reverie. It's been said that memoryis a poet—if so, this novel represents some of its most gorgeous and incandescent work.”—KIRKUS, *STARRED* REVIEW

“[An] evocative debut … [Lopez] delivers a delicately textured, discomfiting first novel, a fitting tribute to mark 40 years of courageous, peaceful marches conducted by mothers of the disappeared in Buenos Aires.” —BOOKLIST

“[An] enticing debut novel… This is a detailed, moving meditation on a mother’s imperfect love... Though delicately written, it’s compulsive in its quest, never trying to neaten the messiness of grief.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“Meditative… sensual, recursive… for readers who especially appreciate when a writer can—in the medium of long and beautiful sentences—reveal to them the idiosyncrasies of their own minds.” —THE ARKANSAS INTERNATIONAL

From the Publisher

★ 2017-09-18
The son of one of Argentina's thousands of dissidents who vanished and were presumed murdered during the so-called Dirty War uses his fertile memory to bring his lost mother back to life.The "disappeared"—those deemed left-wing enemies of the vicious military dictatorship that ruled Argentina during the 1970s and early '80s—still haunt the country's collective memory, especially the surviving family members who don't know what happened to their absent loved ones. This first novel by López, a poet, actor, and director of the literary group Ciclo Carne Argentina, paints an intensely evocative portrait of one such missing person: a woman whose name is one of the few things her son doesn't disclose about her from the memories he carries from childhood. As the book's title implies, it is her physical magnetism that the son most wishes to convey from the beginning: "Her skin was pale and opaque; I could almost say it was bluish, and it had a luster that made it unique, of a natural aristocracy, removed from trivialities." She was, clearly, a single mother, though it isn't altogether clear how or why she became single. The son, who likewise isn't named, doesn't know much about who and where his father is (though in a dream, he thinks he sees his red hair passing by one Christmas Eve). Otherwise it's just him and his "beautiful young" mother who do everything together—except at those times when she leaves him with their neighbor and heads off "with a worried expression on her face" for whole evenings. Where she goes and what she does isn't specified, because the little boy knows nothing except the pleasure he gets whenever they go to the movies or when she allows him to have some candy (which she otherwise forbids) after a bomb scare interrupts his school play. The sweet details of the intimate times between mother and son are delicately woven with shadows of impending menace that, as they're viewed from a child's perspective, are at best vaguely defined beyond his mother's odd silences and occasional tearful outbursts. Still, both he and we are kept in the dark as to the nature of her unease, and even the day when the boy's life changes forever reveals little except physical and emotional ruin. The process of recovering from that ruin, one suspects, culminates with this heartbreaking and moving reverie.It's been said that memory is a poet—if so, this novel represents some of its most gorgeous and incandescent work.

Kirkus Reviews