Bajo La Superficie

Gretel, la protagonista treinta鎑ra de esta fascinante y a ratos perturbadora novela, se ree con su madre, Sarah, que ahora sufre de alzh嶯mer, diecis嶯s a隳s despu廥 de que 廥ta la abandonara. Gretel es lexic鏬rafa y se gana la vida actualizando entradas de diccionarios, as?que sabe bien que las palabras no son inmutables: tampoco lo son los recuerdos ni la vida que se ha construido sobre ellos. Hasta el momento, Sarah ha sido para su hija «como un fantasma sentado a su mesa que devora toda la comida , pero cuando, despu廥 de una incansable bqueda, por fin tiene la oportunidad de formular las preguntas que la atenazan desde que era una adolescente, la memoria de su madre ya no es una l璯ea recta, sino s鏊o una confusa serie de c甏culos deflectores que se trazan para luego desdibujarse. Antes de la separaci鏮, madre e hija vivieron juntas en una casa flotante en los canales de Oxford, un entorno de aislamiento salvaje, plagado de supersticiones y de gente a la que no le gusta estar en tierra firme mucho tiempo. Un escurridizo territorio remiso a la ley y a la geograf燰 donde viven libres y soberanas, pero acechadas por el Bonak, una criatura m癃ica.

Gretel, the thirty-year-old protagonist of this fascinating and at times disturbing novel, is reunited with her mother, Sarah, who now suffers from Alzheimer's, sixteen years after she left her. Gretel is a lexicographer and makes a living updating dictionary entries, so she knows well that words are not immutable: neither are memories nor the life that she has built on them. Until now, Sarah has been to her daughter "like a ghost sitting at her table devouring all the food," but when, after a tireless search, she finally gets a chance to ask the questions that have plagued her since she was a child. As an adolescent, his mother's memory is no longer a straight line, but just a confusing series of deflector circles that are drawn and then blurred. Before the separation, mother and daughter lived together in a houseboat on the Oxford canals, an environment of wild isolation, riddled with superstitions and people who do not like to be on dry land for long. An elusive territory remiss to the law and to the geography where they live free and sovereign, but stalked by the Bonak, a mythical creature.