Sublime.
Lucas is an under-employed writer living in Buenos Aires with his increasingly distant wife and young son. With a decent-sized advance coming from a publisher, he decides to avoid the usurious exchange rate in Argentina by arranging to have the money paid into in account in Uruguay, and then withdrawing it in cash dollars.
But this trip is more than just a fiscal exercise. During his previous trip there several months before, he met a young woman, Guerra, with whom he has become obsessed. The Woman from Uruguay tells the story of Lucas’ day trip to Montevideo.
Argentinian writer Pedro Mairal has produced a novella that is tight, tense, humorous, and quietly profound. Written in first and second person, it takes the form of an epistle from Lucas to his wife. Over the course of one day, we follow Lucas on this trip, sharing his thoughts, feelings, and observations. Mairal lingers over geography: we take the ferry from Buenos Aires over the Rio de la Plata to Colonia del Sacramento. From there we catch a bus down to Montevideo. Lucas and Guerra discuss where the Rio de la Plata ends and where the ocean starts:
“Why do they call this the river, when it’s the ocean?”
“It’s a mix … the ocean really begins in Punta del Este, that’s what they say.”
For Mairal, the river-ocean looms large, signifying the geographically small, but culturally wide, divide between Argentina and Uruguay.
Money weaves its way through the story. It is money which ostensibly takes Lucas across the border. He finds himself next to buildings that appear on Uruguayan notes. He has faith that this money will be the answer to all his problems. After all, he has crossed the “River of Silver” to get here. And it is this money which will take his life in a different direction through the course of this one day.
The Woman from Uruguay is a masterly novella, maintaining narrative tension whilst delving into Lucas’s interior world, and the way in which it interacts with his physical environment. Mairal deftly finds the sublime within the quotidian.
Originally published in 2018 in Spanish, Jennifer Croft’s 2021 English translation is award-worthy.
If you’ve not yet delved into the rich world of Latinx fiction, then this is a short, punchy, introduction. If you are already a devotee, this work will not disappoint.
Reviewed by Tracey Korsten
Twitter: @TraceyKorsten
Distributed by: Bloomsbury Publishing
Released: November 2021
RRP: $29.99
This review is the opinion of the reviewer and not Glam Adelaide.
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