Nancy

Alone but for her thoughts, Nancy waits for death in northern Chile. Before her illness, before her husband drank himself into oblivion, she spent her days at Playa Roja, swimming and drinking among the carefree gringos. Her bitter mother--mi madre mala, Nancy calls her--abandoned the family suddenly. Her brother, her closest confidant, disappeared without explanation. And her father, looking for meaning in it all, converted to Mormonism, leaving Nancy to fend for herself. Speaking through the haze induced by her medication, Nancy gazes deep into memories of this adolescence--simultaneously a source of comfort and pain--and rediscovers a life of quiet tragedy, spirited but ultimately conquered. A heartrending novel punctuated by graves, footprints, x-rays, and crosses, Bruno Lloret's debut, translated from Spanish by Ellen Jones, combines formal invention and powerful storytelling to transcendent effect, brilliantly staging the jubilance and hubris of youth against the horrors of history, illness, and memory.