Still Born
Book
Paperback/Softback
224 pages
978-1-80427-076-9 (ISBN)
Description
Still Born, Guadalupe Nettel's fourth novel, explores one of life's most consequential decisions - whether or not to have children - with her signature charm and intelligence. Alina and Laura are independent and career-driven women in their mid-thirties, neither of whom have built their future around the prospect of a family. Laura has taken the drastic decision to be sterilized, but as time goes by Alina becomes drawn to the idea of becoming a mother. When complications arise in Alina's pregnancy and Laura becomes attached to her neighbour's son, both women are forced to reckon with the complexity of their emotions. In prose that is as gripping as it is insightful, Still Born explores maternal ambivalence with a surgeon's touch, carefully dissecting the contradictions that make up the lived experiences of women.
Reviews / Votes
'Still Born is an astonishingly elegant, intelligent, affecting novel, which has stayed in my mind from the moment I began it to long after I finished. 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.'- Megan Nolan, author of Acts of Desperation 'In Still Born, Guadalupe Nettel renders with great veracity life as it is encountered in the everyday, taking us to the heart of the only things that really matter: life, death and our relationships with others. All of these are contained in the experience of motherhood, which this novel explores and deepens.'
- Annie Ernaux, author of The Years 'Nettel is one of the leading lights in contemporary Latin American literature.... I envy how naturally she makes use of language; her resistance to ornamentation and artifice; and the almost stoic fortitude with which she dispenses her profound and penetrating knowledge of human nature.'
- Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive 'I read Still Born in less than a day. It is perfect: deeply feminist, wise, funny and alive. Nettel is generous to each of her characters, and in prose that is crisp and light. I love this book.'
- Yara Rodrigues Fowler, author of there are more things 'Guadalupe Nettel reminds us that there is nothing stranger than our existence lived in containers of meat, blood and madness.'
- Mariana Enriquez, author of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed 'Rosalind Harvey skilfully translates the original Spanish into precise and plain, but deeply moving, prose. Without resorting to sentimentality, the novel charts its characters' halting efforts to understand and comfort one another. It is a piercing reflection on the ways acts of care bind people together.'
- Economist 'This highly original novel, in an excellent translation by Rosalind Harvey, pursues a range of ideas connected to children, who should have them and who should take care of them...There's a dark undertow to Still Born that reminded me of Elena Ferrante's novels.'
- Miranda France, TLS
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 197 mm
Width: 125 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-80427-076-9 (9781804270769)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Persons
Guadalupe Nettel was born in Mexico in 1973 and grew up between Mexico and France. She is the author of the international-award winning novels El huesped (2006), The Body Where I was Born (2011), After the Winter (2014, Herralde Novel Prize) and Still Born (2020) and three collections of short stories, all published by Anagrama, the most prestigious of all Spanish-language publishing houses. Her work has been translated into more than ten languages and has appeared in publications such as Granta, The White Review, El Pais, the New York Times, La Repubblica and La Stampa. She currently lives in Mexico City where she's the director of the magazine Revista de la Universidad de Mexico.
Rosalind Harvey's translation of Juan Pablo Villalobos' debut novel, Down the Rabbit Hole, was shortlisted for the 2011 Guardian First Book Award and the 2012 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Her latest translation of his work, I'll Sell You A Dog, was longlisted for the International DUBLIN Literary Award. She has worked on books by Guadalupe Nettel, Elvira Navarro, Enrique Vila-Matas and Hector Abad Faciolince and is currently working on a YA title about the journeys of teenage Central American immigrants to the United States. Rosalind is also chair and co-founder of the Emerging Translators Network and is a Teaching Fellow in Spanish and Translation Studies at the University of Warwick. Rosalind Harvey was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018.
Rosalind Harvey's translation of Juan Pablo Villalobos' debut novel, Down the Rabbit Hole, was shortlisted for the 2011 Guardian First Book Award and the 2012 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Her latest translation of his work, I'll Sell You A Dog, was longlisted for the International DUBLIN Literary Award. She has worked on books by Guadalupe Nettel, Elvira Navarro, Enrique Vila-Matas and Hector Abad Faciolince and is currently working on a YA title about the journeys of teenage Central American immigrants to the United States. Rosalind is also chair and co-founder of the Emerging Translators Network and is a Teaching Fellow in Spanish and Translation Studies at the University of Warwick. Rosalind Harvey was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018.