By Claudia Pineiro, translated by Miranda France
Bitter Lemon press, London, 2013
218 pgs
There is a new section in the NY Times book review where
people write in to get book suggestions.
It’s called Match Book- like Match.com, it pairs people up with
books. Cleaver isn’t it?
On January 16th, a woman wanted to read books
from around the world, not white people traveling in exotic places type travel
books, but plots taking place in other countries written by the native
author. I keep hearing my mother
in law, Harriet Spiller’s voice saying “get with the natives!” as I perused the
list of books.
A Crack in the Wall is one of the mysteries that was
suggested in the book review. The
story takes place in Argentina, and follows the interior monologue of an
architect who has a secret.
There’s a dead body, a sexy coworker, young ingénue and the film noir
layout was suspenseful enough for me to read quickly. I have never been to Argentina, and the translation made it
feel not too foreign, similar issues of real estate infighting, gentrification
and greed were parallel to our own environment. The only thing that felt “foreign” were in the translation,
such as a university was called the faculty; as in “a fellow student at
the faculty”. And I felt as
though I were sight seeing on the streets of Buenos Aires, as the protagonist Pablo
Simo takes us to the streets with his young photographer love interest.
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