Extranjera

In a hospital bed, a woman on the verge of death moves her eyelids almost imperceptibly. Beside her, her granddaughter, who barely knows her, gently strokes her hand. In this territory of mystery and silence that accidentally unites them, the two women desperately delve into their lineages to understand who they are. The experience of immigration, the broken ties, alcoholism, the impossible distance from the world around them. Extranjera is a canon of two voices and two times, in which the stories intertwine and form a painful song. How long can a secret be kept hidden? What is the density of the hidden? Inevitably, the obsessions, miseries, and virtues of the characters are reproduced. In his third novel, Gonzalo Heredia combines the brutal and the subtle with astonishing skill to reflect on the unpredictability of relationships.