Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy6i7lDGHhE ( )

Silvina Ocampo was an Argentine writer who died in 1993 and was admired by Borges and Calvino. Known primarily for short stories, this short novella is her longest work, and according to the forward she worked on it obsessively for 25 years until her death. It was published post-humously.

In it, the unnamed narrator has fallen overboard in the middle of the Atlantic. As she watches the ship sail "calmly" away, she promises St. Rita ("arbiter of the impossible") that if she were saved, she would write a book about her life. She calls this book a "dictionary of memories,: but she says, "I don't have a life of my own; I have only feelings. My experiences were never important--not during the course of my life, nor even on the threshold of death. Instead, the lives of others have become mine."

And so the narrator begins to tell us about the people of her life, mostly in short scenes. Some, like Irene and her lover Leandro and daughter Gabriela appear more than once, their stories being told in intermittent vignettes. Others, like Zulma the ballerina next dooer, Rodolfa, Norah, and Ceferina, the neighborhood seamstresses, and Gusano the Worm, Gabriela's childhood friend, appear only once, often only briefly.

Through it all, I was puzzled about where the narrator fit in with the various characters. Where was the intersection of her life with theirs? Or was she perhaps actually one of these characters she describes as third parties? The narrator seemed to have first hand knowledge of everything. In the end, I decided she was not one of the characters described, but I'm still really not sure. I enjoyed this book, even though I am puzzled by it.

3 1/2 stars ( )