Not a River
Ratings4
Average rating4.1
15
Ratings4
Average rating4.1
* SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE * It’s not a river, it’s this river. A hot, motionless afternoon. Enero and El Negro are fishing with Tilo, their dead friend’s teenage son. After hours of struggling with a hooked stingray, Enero aims his revolver into the water and shoots it. They hang the ray’s enormous corpse from a tree at their campsite and let it go to rot, drawing the attention of some local islanders and igniting a long-simmering fury toward outsiders and their carelessness. It’s only the two sisters—the teenage nieces of one of the locals, Aguirre—with their hair black as cowbird feathers and giving off the scent of green grass, who are curious about the trio and invite them to a dance. But the girls are not quite as they seem. As night approaches and tensions rise, Enero and El Negro return to the charged memories of their friend who years ago drowned in this same river. As uneasy and saturated as a prophetic dream, Not a River is another extraordinary novel by Selva Almada about masculinity, guilt, and irrepressible desire, written in a style that is spare and timeless.
Reviews with the most likes.
Rich descriptions of the surroundings and the continuous back-and-forth of multiple time jumps made the book quite hallucinatory. Not to mention, the touch of gothic fiction was quite apt for the core matter of the book. Although the time jumps can be quite jarring sometimes, I think the translator has put it into a good analogy for its aptness for the book itself. The line breaks and lack of chapter divisions make the text itself river shaped, its short sentences lapping at the silence like waves on the shore. The book also beautifully encompasses several thematic materials (toxic masculinity, complex familial relationships, trauma), some of which were explored quite masterfully, although I do think that elaboration on Siomara's circumstances would have been welcomed by me. Maybe 4/4.25 out of 5. P.S: I am very hyped to read [b:Brickmakers 56041871 Brickmakers Selva Almada https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1631855976l/56041871.SY75.jpg 25188317] now!!
