Still Born: Guadalupe Nettel

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The novel has just two characters, the unnamed narrator and their time travelling friend Gustine. This sparsity reflects the aridity of a demented mind. Together, they create rooms for Alzheimer’s patients. Rooms in which a chunk of their familiar time and memory is preserved to provide them with shelter in a rapidly erasing memory world. Deeply intelligent, Still Born is a propulsive novel with a depth of feeling so woven into the language that it never feels worn or applied. The denatured quality of the tone means the ideas of the book – the suspicion of the body as having incompatible desires from the mind; the impulses versus the aversions to child-having; the complexities of the mother-child dynamic – all just absolutely sing. I loved it.’ University of Glasgow and University of Manchester provide funding as members of The Conversation UK.

La premisa me interesó muchísimo –un vistazo a la maternidad desde una perspectiva mexicana- y por eso me animé a leerla. Ahora bien, no la considero una mala historia y de hecho, reconozco que captura la atención del lector enseguida y es prácticamente imposible dejar de leerla. Pero al terminar, he de reconocer que me ha dejado un sabor de boca agridulce: no me parece un mal libro pero tampoco he podido entender por qué se le elogia tanto.Rosalind and I have worked together on several projects and I think she is a very talented translator, definitely one of the best. I’m glad that she is receiving this recognition. She deserves all the prizes. Guadalupe Nettel: In the beginning, my intention was to write the story of my friend and her daughter that I’ve found incredibly inspiring – both terrible and beautiful at the same time. I wanted to understand thoroughly what she went through, to recreate her experience, feelings and insights. More than journalism or anthropological studies, it allows us to connect beyond ideologies, and to enter into a space of intimacy with people from other nations. It makes us share their fears, their hopes, and their life experiences.

There is no word, however, for a parent who loses their child. Unlike previous centuries in which child mortality was very high, it’s not normal for this to occur in our time. It is something so feared, so unacceptable, that we have chosen not to name it’. Nettel, translated by Rosalind Harvey, devotes tight prose to the complicated structure of identity around being (or not being) a mother and explores the constant negotiating women must do in the process. It’s a subject that’s well-trodden, but it’s still consistently treated as a universal experience – Nettel approaches mothering with originality and oceans of empathy.’ The truth was they were both inept, but it is always easier to blame others for what we cannot tolerate in ourselves, what we cannot forgive ourselves for’. Nettel takes a large canvas of issues — life - death - choices —unforeseen circumstances and unexpected turns - female solidarity - maternal regret -

Featured Reviews

Una novela muy cortita, sencilla, pero profunda, una novela que habla sobre la maternidad desde muchos puntos de vista, pero no solo habla de maternidad, sino también de amistades, empatía… Solitude, the vulnerabilities of the body, unearthing the beautiful in the strange, outsiders who are unwilling to conform – these are some of [Nettel’s] interests ... [and she] carries some of these concerns into Still Born.... The prose, which appears in an elegant translation by Rosalind Harvey, retains a matter-of-factness, and in some places a synoptic quality ... that is rarely freighted with sadness or despair.’

Laura, who is working on a thesis, forms an unexpected bond with a troubled neighbourhood household comprising a woman and her young son. The boy is struggling with an aggressive temper directed at his mother after the death of his father. Her strong ideas regarding children and motherhood are put to question when she starts understanding the depth, love and bond of this union. What was the experience of working with the book’s translator, Rosalind Harvey, like? How closely did you work together on the English edition? Did you offer any specific guidance or advice? Were there any surprising moments during your collaboration, or joyful moments, or challenges? Nettel has created rich, flawed, searching characters and allows such access to them – their minds, desires, and contradictions. In part, her book is about the very closeness and intimacy it enacts.Nettel is free. She has succeeded in creating an audacious narrative style all her own, a singular and fearless way of being in the world. An essential voice of the new Latin American literature.’ Uno de mis propósitos de lectura para 2021 ha sido leer más literatura mexicana y, a mitad de año, reconozco que no lo estoy haciendo tan bien. Sin embargo, sabiendo que tengo seis meses más para lograrlo, decidí enmendarme y es así como me encontré con La hija única de Guadalupe Nettel, una novela con excelentes críticas. Esta novela es la historia de tres mujeres que viven la maternidad de formas distintas, cada una con sus retos, miedos, tristezas y alegrías: Laura es una mujer moderna, convencida que jamás desea ser madre; Alina, su amiga, en su primera juventud compartía esas ideas pero luego decide tener un hijo y enfrentar un embarazo complicado; y Doris, vecina de Alina que sucumbe ante el temor de educar a un hijo y no saber cómo.

For readers of Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti, Still Born is a profound novel about motherhood, creativity, and the power of friendship and community to make caretaking easier from “one of the leading lights in contemporary Latin American literature” (Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive). E’ davvero instillato nelle figlie femmine da piccole secondo un programma stabilito a preservare la razza umana? Still Born is Nettel’s fourth novel, wonderfully translated by Rosalind Harvey and due for release on 22nd June with Fitzcarraldo Editions (A big thank-you to Clare at Fitzcarraldo Editions for the ARC). Rosie Flanagan: To me, Still Born is a deeply feminist book, one that affirms female choice and challenges patriarchal ideas of motherhood and maternal instinct. Was this your intention? I love the work of Guadalupe Nettel, one of Mexico’s greatest living writers. Her fiction is brilliant and original, always suffused with sensuality and strange science.’Many demands weigh on mothers. They are always compared to an unattainable stereotype, one that has made women feel inadequate. Not to mention those who decide to remain childless, who are rarely represented in literature up to now. To me, Still Born is a novel which affirms female choices and which challenges patriarchal ideas of motherhood and maternal instinct.