Publishers Weekly
01/29/2024
In this potent novella from Argentine writer Almada (Brickmakers), the killing of a stingray sets off a series of fateful events along an unnamed South American river. Two middle-aged men, Enero and El Negro, are on a fishing trip with a boy named Tilo, the son of their friend, Eusebio. After battling with the ray for hours, Enero shoots it three times with a revolver and the group hangs it from a tree. It’s not long before some locals, led by the intense Aguirre, notice the dead ray and take umbrage at outsiders committing such a grisly act. The timeline shifts frequently from the present-day fishing trip to the past, documenting Enero and El Negro’s years of friendship with Eusebio, who drowned on a similar trip to the same river. Almada gradually unearths the secrets kept by the three outsiders, as well as two local teenage girls, Mariela and Lucy, who are Aguirre’s nieces and who play a pivotal role in how the story unfolds. The novel becomes more ethereal and ghostlike in the second half, and Almada particularly excels at depicting her characters’ fragility and vulnerability: “Ties here are made of cobwebs.... One little breeze and they break,” one character says. Like a dream, this otherworldly tale lingers in the reader’s mind. (May)
From the Publisher
In this potent novella from Argentine writer Almada (Brickmakers), the killing of a stingray sets off a series of fateful events along an unnamed South American river. . . . Like a dream, this otherworldly tale lingers in the reader’s mind.”—Publishers Weekly
“A virtuoso literary work. . . . Flashbacks and side scenes deepen the story which curls and twines like a thrusting tropical vine through the past, roping in sisters, wives, old lovers, boyhood adventures, and jealousies.”—Annie Proulx
“Told with the hallucinatory atmosphere of a dream, this astonishing, stark novel doesn’t turn away from the hypnotic and disturbing effects of violence. The title reads like a refusal in a nightmare, as we round the bends of our present lives and resist the inevitable encounter with the past. Not a River plunges us straight into the depths of its silences, bracingly so—the longer the quiet goes, the more terrible the rupture.”—Manuel Muñoz
“Dark and atmospheric, Almada’s latest grapples with violence, masculinity and memory.” —Karla Strand, Ms. Magazine
“Now with her third novel, Not a River, Almada accentuates the power and allure of nature in a story that synthesizes many of the themes that she has long explored in her writing. . . . The result is her most accomplished work to date, a luxurious wisp of a novel that never wastes a word, in a vital and tender English-language translation once again by McDermott.” —Cory Oldweiler, Southwest Review
