A magic-realist feast.
Anaïs Echeverría has lived in London for several years, is engaged to an Englishman, and is pregnant with his child. When her ancestral home in Lima needs to be sold, she must return to Peru to help organise the sale.
But La Casa Echeverria is more than just bricks and mortar. It has been a landmark since it was built:
“It was imagined into being by Tatarabuelo Ignacio–whose father had made his wealth in bird shit—as he took his siesta one sweltering December afternoon in 1893 and, as soon as construction began … the house became the envy of fashionable Limenian families …”
Members of her extended family already have a developer lined up to buy the now crumbling mansion, but as soon as Anaïs enters the house, she knows she will not sell it. For within these walls are the ghosts of her ancestors, their servants, and the Indigenous peoples who lived in the land long before the European invasion. As she spends time in the casa, and as her pregnancy advances, she connects more and more with these phantoms. And one which dominates is that of Julia Yupanqui, (“long-suffering maid to the Echeverrias”) who fell from a second-storey window in 1986, at the age of 17. Now venerated as a folk-saint, Santa Julia watches over the people of Lima past and present, and blesses the quotidian, performing small miracles that make everyday life a little easier.
Through Santa Julia’s timeless eyes we see the history of Lima, in all its beauty and ugliness. And we walk hand-in-hand with Anaïs as she works through her own history and that of her family. Meanwhile, a new generation is growing within her womb.
The Dust Never Settles is the first novel by Peruvian-British writer Karina Lickorish Quinn. And there is no doubt that this work announces her as an important new voice in Latinx magic-realism. Her writing holds the reader from first word to last. Here is a history of Lima, a cry for social and political justice, an unsentimental exploration of family, and a portrait of a complex woman. Quinn creates some moments of breathtaking, poetic beauty, and yet is not afraid to delve into the revolting, the horrifying, the shocking, and the ugly.
This is a tale of discovery: of self, of country, of family. It is rich, without being cloying; magical without being twee.
Some contemporary literary fiction can seem a bit minimal and clinical, like a spec-house kitchen where everything is hidden behind shiny white cabinets. Quinn pulls all the plates and cups out, dumps them on the counter, and cooks up a messy feast.
May Santa Julia bless you as you tuck in!
Reviewed by Tracey Korsten
Twitter: @TraceyKorsten
Distributed by: Bloomsbury
Released: November 2021
RRP: $29.99
This review is the opinion of the reviewer and not Glam Adelaide.
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