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A review by arirang
Fish Soup by Margarita García Robayo
4.0
Charco Press were the most exciting new publisher in the UK last year. They became best known for the excellent [b:Die, My Love|36098957|Die, My Love|Ariana Harwicz|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1507922567s/36098957.jpg|23858652] which was longlisted for the Man Booker International and shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, but all 4 of their 2017 books I read were excellent, my favourite being [b:Fireflies|38731803|Fireflies|Luis Sagasti|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1519429711s/38731803.jpg|16931188]. Their mission statement:
Fish Soup consists of three separate original books.
- the novella [b:Hasta que pase un huracán|18040376|Hasta que pase un huracán|Margarita García Robayo|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1378684633s/18040376.jpg|25314388] (2012), translated as Waiting for a Hurricane
- the award-winning short-story collection [b:Cosas peores|27222676|Cosas peores|Margarita García Robayo|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1445060755s/27222676.jpg|47265556] (2014), translated as Worse Things
- and the, I believe unpublished in the original, novella Educación sexual, translated as Sexual Education.
The narrator of Waiting for a Hurricane lives on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, where you turn left to continue North, but is desperate to escape. Even as a young child: When people asked me, what do you want to be when you grow up? I’d reply: a foreigner.
The story follows her attempts to make a new life for herself, for example becoming an air hostess, while ultimately struggling to escape. Her ultimate desire is more important than her relationships, which are mainly a means to an end, and when she imagines her life is she stayed and settled with one local boyfriend, she thinks: I’ll always be here, waiting for a hurricane to come.
The seven short stories that comprise Worse Things are all 10-15 pages and deftly sketched portraits of broken lives, with a strong emphasis on bodies that are decaying and places too. In the story from which the title of the English collection is taken, the main character is woken by the pungent smell of boiled fish, one he associates with his wife who used to make fish soup for the patrons of their bar. As he looks at his reflection:
The mirror on the wall reflected the image of a man worn out by working late nights: thin and saggy, his skin transparent like tracing paper, with blue veins snaking all over his body like a hydrographic map of a country with an abundance of rivers. Villafora was the owner of an old bar, which was also his home. The bar was named “Helena” after his wife, who had died from a long and painful disease that took hold of every bone on her body and left her prostrate in bed, delirious. The bar was on the ground floor, it was a spartan place, an industrial drinking hole with wooden tables and chairs, and a large bar with high stools. It had floor-to-ceiling windows looking onto a side-street - in the morning this alleyway was filled with grocery stalls and at night, with prostitutes who, for lack of clients, often came to hang out in a bar. The house was on the upper floor. It consisted of a small living room with a window, and an adjoining bedroom and bathroom. Through the living room window, there was a view of a harbour. It was more of a dumping ground for clapped-out old fishing boats. The city was a tourist resort, the kind of place backpackers and young runaway couples passed through.
In the final story, Sky and Poplars, Ema, although this is never stated explicitly, seems to have had a late miscarriage: a tragedy but her seeminly unemotional reaction has led her husband to leave her and, when she leaves the country to visit her parents, they also struggle to relate to her. A memorable passage 'contrasts' her mother and her sister, Ema's aunt who was neither ugly nor pretty. And as far as Ema could recall, neither was she good at anything in particular. She was utterly unremarkable, Her mother on the other hand was very good at being mediocre at everything she did. She excelled at that: she put a lot of effort into being mediocre.
For a celebrated author, the decision to translate an unpublished story for her English debut might seem odd, but is justified as Sexual Education is perhaps the strongest of the collection, with García Robayo's dark humour, that underlies the other stories, more to the fore.
The first-person narrator attends a strict Catholic girl school, where the girls are given lessons in abstinence, yet in practice the behaviour of even the seemingly pious girls is rather in contrast to what they are taught, with Bill-Clintonesque justifications of what exactly is or is not acceptable. Our narrator is a detached and rather sarcastic observer of both the excessively strict teaching and the contrasting excessively wild behaviour of her classmates.
In one pivotal scene, complete with a Nirvana reference, an older girl has her drink spiked and is then gang raped by 7 boys from the neighbouring religious boys' school. While the boys crime is rather hushed up, the school seems to reserve its greatest condemnation for her parents, for their crime of having a doctor prescribe her the morning after pill. As the headmistress announces the expulsion of the girl:
I was sitting at the back of the classroom, with my headphones hidden under a blanket. Oh no, I know a dirty word, Kurt was whispering in my right ear. The left air was listening attentively to the headmistress, who was announcing the apocalypse, because the unknown potential of a creature with seven fathers had been snubbed out.
Overall, a slightly uneven collection but an interesting and fresh new voice in English, very much fulfilling Charco Press's mission statement, and with another excellent translation from Charlotte Coombe.
3.5 stars rounded up to 4 because of the distinctiveness of Charco Press's output.
Charco Press focuses on finding outstanding contemporary Latin American literature and bringing it to new readers in the English-speaking world. We aim to act as a cultural and linguistic bridge for you to be able to access a brand new world of fiction that has, until now, been missing from your reading list.The first of their 2018 offerings is Fish Soup by Margarita García Robayo and translated by [a:Charlotte Coombe|4049049|Charlotte Coombe|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]. who also translated the enjoyable [b:The President's Room|35671963|The President's Room|Ricardo Romero|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1500012982s/35671963.jpg|45969478] for Charco Press last year.
Fish Soup consists of three separate original books.
- the novella [b:Hasta que pase un huracán|18040376|Hasta que pase un huracán|Margarita García Robayo|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1378684633s/18040376.jpg|25314388] (2012), translated as Waiting for a Hurricane
- the award-winning short-story collection [b:Cosas peores|27222676|Cosas peores|Margarita García Robayo|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1445060755s/27222676.jpg|47265556] (2014), translated as Worse Things
- and the, I believe unpublished in the original, novella Educación sexual, translated as Sexual Education.
The narrator of Waiting for a Hurricane lives on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, where you turn left to continue North, but is desperate to escape. Even as a young child: When people asked me, what do you want to be when you grow up? I’d reply: a foreigner.
The story follows her attempts to make a new life for herself, for example becoming an air hostess, while ultimately struggling to escape. Her ultimate desire is more important than her relationships, which are mainly a means to an end, and when she imagines her life is she stayed and settled with one local boyfriend, she thinks: I’ll always be here, waiting for a hurricane to come.
The seven short stories that comprise Worse Things are all 10-15 pages and deftly sketched portraits of broken lives, with a strong emphasis on bodies that are decaying and places too. In the story from which the title of the English collection is taken, the main character is woken by the pungent smell of boiled fish, one he associates with his wife who used to make fish soup for the patrons of their bar. As he looks at his reflection:
The mirror on the wall reflected the image of a man worn out by working late nights: thin and saggy, his skin transparent like tracing paper, with blue veins snaking all over his body like a hydrographic map of a country with an abundance of rivers. Villafora was the owner of an old bar, which was also his home. The bar was named “Helena” after his wife, who had died from a long and painful disease that took hold of every bone on her body and left her prostrate in bed, delirious. The bar was on the ground floor, it was a spartan place, an industrial drinking hole with wooden tables and chairs, and a large bar with high stools. It had floor-to-ceiling windows looking onto a side-street - in the morning this alleyway was filled with grocery stalls and at night, with prostitutes who, for lack of clients, often came to hang out in a bar. The house was on the upper floor. It consisted of a small living room with a window, and an adjoining bedroom and bathroom. Through the living room window, there was a view of a harbour. It was more of a dumping ground for clapped-out old fishing boats. The city was a tourist resort, the kind of place backpackers and young runaway couples passed through.
In the final story, Sky and Poplars, Ema, although this is never stated explicitly, seems to have had a late miscarriage: a tragedy but her seeminly unemotional reaction has led her husband to leave her and, when she leaves the country to visit her parents, they also struggle to relate to her. A memorable passage 'contrasts' her mother and her sister, Ema's aunt who was neither ugly nor pretty. And as far as Ema could recall, neither was she good at anything in particular. She was utterly unremarkable, Her mother on the other hand was very good at being mediocre at everything she did. She excelled at that: she put a lot of effort into being mediocre.
For a celebrated author, the decision to translate an unpublished story for her English debut might seem odd, but is justified as Sexual Education is perhaps the strongest of the collection, with García Robayo's dark humour, that underlies the other stories, more to the fore.
The first-person narrator attends a strict Catholic girl school, where the girls are given lessons in abstinence, yet in practice the behaviour of even the seemingly pious girls is rather in contrast to what they are taught, with Bill-Clintonesque justifications of what exactly is or is not acceptable. Our narrator is a detached and rather sarcastic observer of both the excessively strict teaching and the contrasting excessively wild behaviour of her classmates.
In one pivotal scene, complete with a Nirvana reference, an older girl has her drink spiked and is then gang raped by 7 boys from the neighbouring religious boys' school. While the boys crime is rather hushed up, the school seems to reserve its greatest condemnation for her parents, for their crime of having a doctor prescribe her the morning after pill. As the headmistress announces the expulsion of the girl:
I was sitting at the back of the classroom, with my headphones hidden under a blanket. Oh no, I know a dirty word, Kurt was whispering in my right ear. The left air was listening attentively to the headmistress, who was announcing the apocalypse, because the unknown potential of a creature with seven fathers had been snubbed out.
Overall, a slightly uneven collection but an interesting and fresh new voice in English, very much fulfilling Charco Press's mission statement, and with another excellent translation from Charlotte Coombe.
3.5 stars rounded up to 4 because of the distinctiveness of Charco Press's output.