Description

Uncomfortable family situations, unfortunate health conditions, people on the brink of survival – this is what each story in this collection captures, every ripple and every echo that travels from one person to another. With narrative ease and a seductive pull, Margarita Garcìa Robayo reminds us that sometimes intimate struggles are as fragile as they are political, and there is nothing but time that keeps us going. A refreshing and luminous novella, Fish Soup can be read as a flamed rite of passage novel but also as a story of a turn against the what one’s country makes you dream for. Longing to get out of the coastal village where she lives, an ambitious girl thinks up the best plan for escape: becoming a flight attendant. In her cynical and sad voice and a dark, dirty city, we find the other side of the happy Caribbean. In this context, another American dream is lived and relationships start to fumble and bring claustrophobia. It’s a habitat that naturalizes petty violence and where the accepted code is competition and necessity. A story that ponders the destiny of its characters in the middle of catastrophes that can be real, self-provoked or the result of an intelligent strategy.