“Still Born” by Guadalupe Nettel, is a piercing reflection on the ways acts of care can bind people together, and on the unpredictability of life
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskLike Elena Ferrante’s tale of maternal ambivalence, “The Lost Daughter”, and Rachel Cusk’s unblinking memoir, “A Life’s Work”, “Still Born” evokes the darker side of motherhood. In Laura’s case, the feeling of aversion to it runs deep.
Like the author, Alina and Laura are from Mexico City, but meet in their 20s while living in France, bonding over their distaste for “the human shackles” of parenthood. Years later, when they are both back in Mexico, Alina reveals that she and her partner have decided to have a baby.
Alina eventually becomes pregnant, but in her final trimester is warned that the infant will die as soon as she is delivered. “Still Born” unspools from this horror to convey the extremes of love and grief. An unflinching witness to her friend’s experiences, Laura is a flawed but engaging narrator.
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 can bind people together, and on the unpredictability of life. You make decisions, but as Alina tells Laura, “whatever has to happen will happen. No one gets out of that.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline"The pity of tiny feet"
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