Raquel Zas makes her debut in fiction with The Dry Years (Temas de Hoy), a novel about learning how to live. In this book, Clara, who has just ended a relationship, returns to the town where her parents grew up, seeking to begin again.
However, this step backward in her life becomes a fresh start thanks to the therapist she visits to address her complete lack of desire.
With the guidance of the therapist and the exercises she assigns, Clara begins to uncover the reasons behind that deeply rooted frustration (one that is easy to recognize in herself), the cause of her repulsion toward appetite, and whether she has always been the one who has made decisions about her body and her own desire.
“Returning to the paternal home is to reconnect with our past selves; it is to hold ourselves accountable to who we are, in relation to who we were.”
This step back, in her parents’ village, also entails reconnecting with old friends and returning to precarious survival jobs… an amalgam of triggers that allow Clara to understand her desire, explore her sexuality and the history of her pleasures, and discover why the imposition of guilt or shame always lands on the same side.
Zas’s novel confronts Clara (and an entire society accustomed to tendencies toward shame, discomfort, or guilt) with a multifaceted mirror not devoid of conflicts surrounding the exploration of pleasure. It is in that mirror, in the form of fiction, where every reader finds themselves: going back to the paternal home is a confrontation with our past selves, it is accounting for who we are to who we were, it is learning to drown in order to learn to swim.
—————————————
Author: Raquel Zas. Title: The Dry Years. Publisher: Temas de Hoy. Sales: All Your Books.