Random Things Tours: Betty Boo by Claudia Piñeiro translated by Miranda France

I got to read my first book by Claudia Piñeiro a couple of months ago - Elena Sabe/Elena Knows - and found completely obsolete to attempt a genre classification as it does uses different angles and plot layers that makes the book unique yet avoiding any categories.

However, nothing prepared me for the encounter with Betty Boo, translated from Argentinian Spanish by author and translator Miranda France. Set in the journalistic milieu of Buenos Aires, it is built around a crime discovered in the rich and famous compound La Maravillosa. Journalist and thriller writer Nurit - nicknamed Betty Boo for her ressemblance with the iconic cartoon with almost a similar name (actually Boop) - is assigned to cover the case. However, she may get involved at a certain extent in solving the crime, while getting entangled into a love story she is fighting to keep.

But there is definitely more to the story than crime and love: the tormented social and political history of Argentina is brought into question, not only as a background but as part of a reality that it determines at a significant extent. And last but not least, there is a subtext focused on women stories and social and age limitations.

There are so many elements that often happened to completely forget that I should focus on a crime story. It seemed that I also forgot the beauty of the stories within the stories, that used to fascinate me many years ago when I was discovering and exploring the Argentinian writers.  

Betty Boo - which was turned into a movie Betibu - is a beautifully intelligent book, a pleasure to read, an invitation to reconsider literature as a whole experience, beyond different classifications that in fact, may not have anything to do with the literary talent and craftsmanship. Besides being keen on watching the movie as well, this book inspired me to get back more often to the Argentinian literature but also to explore more of Piñeiro´s books. 

Rating: 4.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own

Book Review: Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro (translated by Frances Riddle)

 

I made a terrible mistake for at least half of my reading of Elena Knows (Elena Sabe, in the original Spanish) by the multi-awarded Argentinian author Claudia Piñeiro, translated from Spanish by Frances Riddle: I desperately look for a mystery/thriller red thread. So desperately that I was about to give up the moment when I figured out that, in fact, the book has a completely different spin. However, as I continued to read the book, I realized that just opening your mind to a book, without counting on any genre-related label may be a much better way to appreciate a story. 

Rita is dead. She was found hanging from the church belfry. Her mother, Elena, does not believe the official version of a suicide. Rita always avoided the church on a rainy day and when she died, it was raining. Although coping with an advanced form of Parkinson´s, Elena decided to go to Buenos Aires to meet someone that may know why Rita is dead. Maybe that person is the perpetrator of the crime herself.

´Elena knows that her daughter was murdered. She doesn´t know who did it or why. She can´t figure out the motive. She can´t see it´.

The journey - the storyline and the reading - takes a couple of hours only, but the slow pace is intense because builds up: expectations, mystery, body weights. A confrontations of bodies: Rita´s stiff body being taken down from the church belfry vs. Elena´s body controled by ´Herself´, her illness. The lonely lives of two women, out of which only one, the most fragile is left. Bodies controlled by society, men´s desires, the church and their priests. Bodies that are expected to give birth and be mothers when men are just disappearing. Bodies shaped more by society than by the freedom of desire.

The writing - and subsequently, the translation - is excellent. Elena has a well defined voice and the dramatic references to her body´s decline are deeply emotional. But actually, it is less about Elena, but about Rita and how we react faced with the physical impairment of those we love. Sometimes, the cruelty of life is stronger than the power keeping us alive.

Rating: 3.5 stars