{"id":286456,"date":"2011-08-08T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-08T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2011\/08\/08\/latest-review-the-fish-child-by-lucia-puenzo\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:09:55","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:09:55","slug":"latest-review-the-fish-child-by-lucia-puenzo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2011\/08\/08\/latest-review-the-fish-child-by-lucia-puenzo\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest Review: &#34;The Fish Child&#34; by Lucia Puenzo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/index.php?id=3535\">latest addition<\/a> to our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/index.php?s=reviews\">Reviews Section<\/a> is a piece by Sara Cohen on Lucia Puenzo&#8217;s <em>The Fish Child<\/em>, which is translated from the Spanish by David William Foster and available from Texas Tech as part of The Americas series. <\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve written about <a href=\"http:\/\/ttupress.org\/_catalog_105878\/The_Americas\">The Americas series<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/?s=tag&amp;t=the-americas-series\">before,<\/a> but if you&#8217;re not already familiar with this, it&#8217;s a special literature series edited by Irene Vilar that was once housed at the University of Wisconsin Press and is now published by Texas Tech University Press. The focus is on Spanish and Portuguese literature from south of our border, and includes works from Moacyr Scliar (who will be featured in the Read This Next program in the near future), Ernesto Cardenal, and David Toscana. It&#8217;s a really great&#8212;and attractively produced&#8212;series.<\/p>\n<p>Lucia Puenzo was selected by <em>Granta<\/em> as one of the &#8220;Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelist&#8221; for their special issue that came out last fall. As a result, we did a special piece on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/index.php?id=2995\">Puenzo<\/a> as part of our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/?s=tag&amp;t=young-spanish-novelists\">22 Days of Awesome<\/a> series.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, as mentioned in that post&#8212;and in Sara&#8217;s review&#8212;Puenzo is not just a novelist, but also a filmmaker. In the <i>Granta<\/i>-related post, we included the trailer for <em><span class=\"caps\">XXY<\/span><\/em>, so this time, here&#8217;s the trailer for <em>The Fish Child<\/em>, a &#8220;gripping tale of forbidden lesbian romance and a crime heist gone awry that boasts beautiful cinematography and electrifying performances from its two female leads.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"380\" height=\"237\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Vs9yGPf_C2E\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\nhttps:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/index.php?id=2995<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/?s=tag&amp;t=sara-cohen\">Sara Cohen<\/a> is interning here this summer, and along with <del>mailing<\/del> her other internish duties, she&#8217;s been writing reviews of some of these Texas Tech books. <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Here are four things you should know about <em>The Fish Child<\/em>:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>1.) The novel is sensual, crude, vibrant and unyielding. <br \/>\n2.) The protagonists, Lala and Guayi, are the sort of characters who make dangerous, fascinating mistakes. <br \/>\n3.) Puenzo, born in Buenos Aires, directed a film adaptation of <em>The Fish Child<\/em> that premiered in Berlin. So this story has traveled all around the world before it\u2019s finally been brought to print in the U.S.<br \/>\n4.) <em>The Fish Child<\/em> is narrated by the family\u2019s pet dog.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>If that last item threw you off, that\u2019s okay. The canine mindset is a bit alienating in both theory and practice. Just look at the novel\u2019s opening paragraph:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;It could have been worse, believe me. It took them a day to make up their minds. Prodan. Saumerio. Violeta. I imagined myself going out into the world like Violeta and I peed my pants hiding in corners. Let\u2019s see if you get me: I\u2019m black, macho and bad. No matter how I look right now, with tubes coming out of me, on the verge of being dead meat. It was an accident, something that could happen to anyone. And what they\u2019re saying is not true: I\u2019m not stupid, just curious. If I see something moving beneath the leaves\u2026I bite. Sorry, I digress, I know\u2026it isn\u2019t easy when Lala caresses me this way. And it doesn\u2019t look good, a dying dog with an erection.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Puenzo&#8217;s narrating mutt (ultimately christened Seraf\u00edn) allows the reader a unique view of the world. Characters, setting and plot are presented free of the standard censorship of &#8220;polite&#8221; society. The result is a gritty, sensual narrative voice that, along with a tight sense of storytelling, makes this novel impossible to put down.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Click <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/index.php?id=3535\">here<\/a> to read the entire review. <\/p>\n<div class=\"ad_banner\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/catalog.openletterbooks.org\/authors\/6\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/images\/130.jpg\" \/><\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The latest addition to our Reviews Section is a piece by Sara Cohen on Lucia Puenzo&#8217;s The Fish Child, which is translated from the Spanish by David William Foster and available from Texas Tech as part of The Americas series. We&#8217;ve written about The Americas series before, but if you&#8217;re not already familiar with this, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67456],"tags":[7656,41946,41936,39536,1646,41376,6516,25856,39526],"class_list":["post-286456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-argentine-literature","tag-david-william-foster","tag-fish-child","tag-lucia-puenzo","tag-review","tag-sara-cohen","tag-spanish-literature","tag-texas-tech-university-press","tag-the-americas-series"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311886,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286456\/revisions\/311886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}