Carlos FonsecaNatural History by Megan McDowell

Abstract

all her novels, are possibly nothing more than simulacra. Perhaps in the end, The Lying Life of Adults portrays us all as unreliable narrators of our own lives, lying when it suits us; we tell ourselves big lies and littles lies, but lies all the same. The novel, which explores many of the same themes we come to expect in Ferrante’s oeuvre, exposes a cruelty and suffering inherent in all relationships. Most of the time this cruelty is dormant, but other times it manifests itself in spectacular ways, and that cruelty is never more powerful and damaging than when we exercise it against those to whom we are closest. The Lying Life of Adults is a triumph, a bright star in Ferrante ’s expanding literary cosmos. Andrew Martino is dean of the Honors College at Salisbury University, where he is also a professor of English. Carlos Fonseca Natural History Trans. Megan McDowell. New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2020. 320 pages. MIDWAY THROUGH Carlos Fonseca’s new novel, an actress who has exchanged the limelight for a sprawling, subversive art project summarizes her views on innovation and mythmaking. “The only true artwork is disappearance itself,” the notorious Virginia McCallister writes in her journal— which can and will be used against her in a court of law. Natural History toggles between a verdant Guatemalan jungle, a stagnant Pennsylvania mining town, a posh loft in New York City, and a neglected San Juan highrise claimed by poor families. The action takes place in the 1950s, the ’70s, the ’90s, and the 2010s. For the talented, cosmopolitan Fonseca—he was born in Costa Rica, spent much of his youth in Puerto Rico, and now lives in London—these far-flung locales and varied timelines serve as staging grounds for an inspired narrative about family, creativity, and self-destruction. Deftly translated by Megan McDowell, this is an intellectually fertile book, one that features an engrossing plot and several perceptive character studies. The story starts in the suburban New Jersey home of our narrator, a naturalhistory museum curator. One night, as he’s preparing for bed, he sees that a package has been dropped on his doorstep. Someone close to Giovanna Luxembourg, a renowned and secretive fashion designer whose recent death is shrouded in mystery, has sent the curator a bundle of manila envelopes. You might suppose that these two ran in very different circles. But you’d be wrong. Years ago, the curator explains, Giovanna got in touch and asked that he visit her Manhattan studio. She was working on a new clothing line inspired by animals that camouflage themselves, and she wanted to tap into his rarified knowledge. Over the course of two years, they met regularly, discussing sphinx moths, arctic hares, and wily mammals found in temperate climes. And then, without warning, “the project dissolved as spontaneously as it was conceived ,” he explains. As far as the curator knows, his expertise didn’t inform any of her work, and he’s always wondered why he was summoned in the first place. The intriguing package delivered to the curator promises to retroactively clarify the nature of their collaboration. This, though, is only the beginning. As he digs into the envelopes, he realizes that he’s looking at nothing less than Giovanna’s life story. She never told him about her youth or her family , but now, in death, she’s decided to share it all. Thus begins a set of intertwined stories that form the novel’s heart. In one of these tales, we watch as Giovanna’s parents—American-born Virginia and Yoav Toledano, an Israeli photographer —cut a glamorous, reckless swath through boozy midcentury New York. A decade or so later, we’re in Central America , where Virginia and Yoav, with preteen Giovanna in tow, trek through a rain forest in search of a child prophet who foresees the world’s end. Decades hence, Fonseca takes us to a financially depressed town in the American heartland and a busy Puerto Rican metropolis. In the former, Yoav adopts a hermetic existence, willfully estranged from the people and work he once loved. The latter is where Virginia reinvents herself as a mischief...