La última hermana

Abstract

Camila), a twenty-five-year-old woman who has a love relationship with two people of different sex. More than a story of lesbian love, this is a story of bisexual love. Despite its playful and funny tone, behind the narrator’s voice, many doubts come to the fore along with the fear and darkness that surround a life being played in two different fields. The fact that humor is probably hiding many tears is what makes the novel honest and especially courageous. It is interesting to note that Gutiérrez ’s writing style inserts itself—perhaps unconsciously—in a tradition fully established in Latin America by the Colombian writer Fernando Vallejo. No te ama does not pretend to stand out for having strong characters and a solid plot. What is important here is the narrator’s voice, her vision of the world, and the novel’s natural way of transgressing the most basic social conventions. Camila Gutiérrez, as Vallejo, plays at confusing the reader intentionally by using her own biography as the material for the novel. This mechanism (which is more a trick and a hook for the reader), although present in all of Vallejo’s novels, does not diminish the literary merit of Gutiérrez’s writings. On the contrary, in both her novels, this young Chilean writer has succeeded at using this mechanism to create a personal voice that is unique and seductively convincing. The novel transgresses the traditional and moral conventions of the flat religious and heterosexual Chilean world, without the obligatory sense of guilt. It does this with humor, confidence, and wit. And in No te ama, wit shifts from scatology to tenderness, hence the excessive and stinging references to sex. Nevertheless, No te ama is not a novel about sex but about the search for love, a journey in which the searcher has sex with those she loves and with those she does not love as much. As in real life. Or almost. Marcelo Rioseco University of Oklahoma Jorge Edwards. La última hermana. Barcelona. Acantilado. 2016. 373 pages. La última hermana, the latest novel by Chilean Jorge Edwards, is a compelling story about the cruelty of war but also of a courage born of human compassion. Set in Paris in 1942, during the Nazi occupation, it tells the story of María Edwards MacClure , a wealthy Chilean aristocrat who, having moved to Paris after World War I, lives a privileged life in the French capital. At first, María comes across as a frivolous , self-absorbed woman who is known for her social elegance. An art lover, she spends time mingling with celebrities, including Vicente Huidobro, Colette, and Picasso. But when the Germans invade Paris, María experiences a moral awakening and decides to help the French Resistance by becoming a volunteer at the Rothschild Maternity Hospital, where Jewish women give birth and are later taken by the Gestapo, never to be seen again. Nota Bene WORLDLIT.ORG 81 Michael Köhlmeier Two Gentlemen on the Beach Trans. Ruth Martin Haus Publishing Austrian writer Michael Köhlmeier weaves a story about two of the most iconic figures of the twentieth century— Winston Churchill and Charlie Chaplin—in a tale of how a chance meeting revealed the two men were not as opposite as perceived. What started as a way to cope with their depression turns into a heartwarming friendship told through a delicate yet intriguing narrative. Tabish Khair Just Another Jihadi Jane Interlink Told in the style of a dictated interview, East Indian author Tabish Khair describes the story of two Muslim immigrants, best friends Jamilla and Ameena. When tragedy strikes Jamilla’s family, the two young women leave England and become part of the Islamist cause in Syria. What they find there will change common perceptions of heroes and villains in this incredible tale. Driven by a true sense of generosity, María, with the help of a friend, repeatedly hides babies under her blue nurse’s cape and takes them out of the hospital to give them up for safe adoption. Soon, however, she is suspected by the Gestapo, but in order to maintain her façade of neutrality, she continues...