Wednesday at Zenda. Wednesday of foreign non-fiction. Wednesday, in this case, devoted to Aguamarina, the debut novel by American author Carol Anshaw (Grosse Pointe, Michigan, 1946), originally published in 1992 and now revived, with a Spanish translation by Regina López Muñoz, for the publishing house Errata Naturae. A novel of novels, Aguamarina toys with the impact of a single event on the life of a person, here the protagonist of its narration, to conjecture possible scenarios according to how she reacts to what happened. Valuable as LGBT testimony—and, in its own way, a small emblem of queer literature—the debut of Carol Anshaw is also an exercise in enormous narrative and emotional intelligence.
La propia editorial apunta, acerca de la obra: “Juegos Olímpicos de 1968, Ciudad de México. Allí, Jesse Austin, de diecisiete años, pierde por unas milésimas de segundo la prueba de cien metros estilo libre ante una nadadora australiana.
Ese instante cruel y decisivo, suspendido para siempre en el azul verdoso de la piscina olímpica, la atormentará durante el resto de su vida
. O, mejor dicho, de sus vidas.
Because, after that primal scene, Carol Anshaw makes a prodigious creative leap to 1990, the year in which Jesse turns forty, and from which the narration splits into three possible lives for her. Each one is the result of the different decisions she took after those Olympics and which, depending on the case, have led her to marry, divorce, or stay single, to love men or women, to shut herself away in her native Missouri or to run as far away from it as possible. Each existence bears the weight of that failure; but it also gathers loves lost and found, family relationships that are strengthened or blurred… Connected perfectly by the emotional ties that bind Jesse to her past, this admirable literary triptych seduces us not only with its stimulating variations, but also with the similarities that resonate in each vital narrative, unchanging. Jesse is always Jesse, and yet not. Her three lives, shaken by decisions both wise and foolish, reveal Anshaw’s mastery, who presents this narrative diversion with captivating audacity, much humor, and a great compassion, and who moves us, delights us, and intrigues us at the same time. Transformed into skilled swimmers, we dive willingly into these refreshing tales and cannot stop reading. And when, to our sorrow, we reach the end, they continue to challenge us: they make us reflect on our own lives, while not ceasing to wonder about all that we have discarded. How would we be now? What ghosts would haunt us and to what joys would we cling?
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Author: Carol Anshaw. Title: Aguamarina. Translation: Regina López Muñoz. Publisher: Errata Naturae. Retailer: Todos tus libros.