Reviews

Элена знает by Claudia Piñeiro

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myosotis_maddi's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

pamslibros's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

zlaza's review against another edition

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4.0

'Elena Knows', by the Argentinian author Claudia Piñeiro, follows Elena, a woman in her 60s, who suffers from Parkinson's disease.
Impaired by her illness, Elena is on a quest across Buenos Aires to find out what happened to her daughter, Rita.
The police have ruled her daughter's tragic death as suicide, but Elena believes otherwise.

'Elena Knows' is a short novel set over the course of a single day.
The novel takes us on a wild journey with Elena, whose every move is perfectly timed around each pill she takes for her Parkinson's disease.
With every pill she takes, Elena gets a limited amount of movement that helps her reach the next stopping point to her destination.

'Elena Knows' is written in a stream of consciousness style which makes for an impactful read. Throughout the novel we're stuck in the head of a helpless person who is paralysed by her illness.
She's also a very flawed person and not exactly a sympathetic character.

It's a haunting and brutally honest novel about the burden of coping with an incapacitating illness, and what a strain it can become on the patient and the caregiver.