Reviews of A New Kind Of Wilderness, The Marching Band, Good One and Magic Farm by MARIA DUARTE, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA
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Fiction Review: Optic Nerve by Maria Ginza
Maria Ginza's novel is an outstanding exploration of the nature of perception
SCOTT ALSWORTH foresees the coming of the smaller, leaner, and class conscious indie studio, with art as its guiding star
MARJORIE MAYO recommends an accessible and unsettling novel that uses a true incident of death in the Channel to raise questions of wider moral responsibility
MIK SABIERS wallows in a night of political punk and funk that fires both barrels at Trump
Reasonable radicalism, death in Abu Dhabi, locked-room romance, and sleuthing in the Blitz
SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
Optic Nerve
by Maria Gainza
(Vintage Publishing, £14.99)
THIS exquisite novel of a woman in her twenties searching for meaning through the paintings she loves is a stunning debut from Maria Gainza.
Part autobiographical fiction, part art criticism, it’s set in her native Buenos Aires and comes across as a subtle chronicle of a city, family life and a culture deeply rooted in the “southern cone” of Latin America.
The narrator, like Gainza an art critic living in the Argentine capital, defines herself as the “black sheep” of one of the most aristocratic families in the country. She effortlessly intersperses personal stories of friendship, marriage, love, fear of flying and family grudges with the life and work of famous painters — from Gustave Courbet to Tsugaru Foujita — whose work hangs in the galleries of Buenos Aires.
More from this author
A novel by Argentinian Jorge Consiglio, a personal dictionary by Uruguayan Ida Vitale, and poetry by Mexican Homero Aridjis
Travelogue/reportage by Argentinean Maria Sonia Cristoff, and poetry by Peruvian Gaston Fernandez and Puerto Rican Cristina Perez Diaz
A pamphlet by British Latinx poet Patrick Romero McCafferty, poetry by Anglo-Argentinian Miguel Cullen, and a book of conjuring poems by Mexican Pedro Serrano
LEO BOIX selects the best books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction written by Latinx and Latin American authors published this year
