The “suspicious narrator,” as proposed by Wayne Booth in
The Rhetoric of Fiction
, is a narrator who provokes distrust in the reader by lying or, at least, hiding important parts of the plot. He is sometimes a narcissist or psychopath, representing the world in a deliberately opportunistic manner to exaggerate its virtues, advance its interests, and bury its crimes. Other times he is an idiot, who allows himself to be fooled and does not understand things due to lack of enlightenment or attention. When he is a woman, however, it is enough for him to accurately describe what is happening to her to provoke distrust. Nobody believes the things that happen to women.
Neither the parents, nor the husbands, nor the doctors who, throughout history, have pathologized the female experience as neurosis, hysteria, somatism, psychosis, diabolic possession, witchcraft and other conditions derived from their uterine animality or their deviant imagination and feverish. But, most especially, the judges. “The law doesn't understand, the judges don't understand, or they pretend they have cognitive problems,” complains Lisa, the protagonist of the latest novel by Argentine writer Ariana Harwicz. A foreign mother separated from her children could be prone to losing her own mind and that of others. To be honest, Lisa doesn't put much effort into it.
“In cases like yours, you cannot dress in leather, with
animal print
, with low necklines, with wooden heels,” the state's attorney tells her, “it does not benefit you, do you understand me?” I cannot represent her if she does not collaborate.” Lisa doesn't cooperate. She talks weird, she does weird things, she does the exact opposite of what she's told. She thinks badly and behaves badly. At her family court office they tell her to calm down. “Anything you do too much hurts it.” Her gaze is suffocating and sticky; a flow that invades surfaces with the consistency of tar. She stalks her children, hangs around her husband's house and drinks half a bottle while she waits for the title trial to arrive. Her behavior is so alarming that it is difficult for her to stop at the original premise: “In cases like yours.” What case is she?
Losing the Lawsuit
could be a
contentious divorce marriage
thriller
in the era of “conscious uncoupling.” If it weren't for the insinuation of anti-Semitic hatred, of a suffocating regime of in-laws that invade lives and homes, of an icy bureaucracy that responds only to correct behavior and extend sanctions. A world “where hatred of hatred and allowing oneself to be decapitated without a word reigns.”
At parties they serve fatty, moldy cheeses, cars brake “like an acute myocardial infarction,” Lisa sees in her children “the distrust of a pig when it realizes that it is going to be cut up.” Snow “can thin out or become a lethal weapon,” cargo trucks “bring weapons to Bakhmut.” Her story receives interference from cruel endings that are confused with reality. Is all that malevolence in the environment or is it the eye that projects her crooked gaze onto the world?
The suspicious narrator is the usual tool in the lineage of feminist, maternal and environmental horror writers that unites Jean Rhys and Shirley Jackson with the new Argentine literature of Samanta Schweblin, Mariana Enríquez and Dolores Reyes. Harwicz is distinguished by her decidedly French, more bureaucratic and eschatological sensibility.
His first novel,
Matate, amor
, was a finalist for the Booker International Prize and is in the process of being turned into a film produced by Scorsese, directed by Lynne Ramsay and starring Jennifer Lawrence. Anagrama has compiled his first three novels in the volume
Trilogy of Passion
. The author says that her novels have been used in her own divorce trial to demonstrate her status as a bad mother. "I was judged by a 19th century law that stipulates that, although separated for years, until the divorce decree is issued, one must remain chaste," she tweeted in 2021. "I was sentenced by a French court to wear the 'Adulteress' sign." . Not far away, he would have been whipped or stoned.”
Losing Your Mind
is being adapted to theater and film.
Lose your mind
Ariana Harwicz
Anagrama, 2024
136 pages, 17.90 euros
Look for it in your bookstore
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