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Revelatory depiction of life in Buenos Aires slum is a tragi-comic triumph
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Slum Virgin
by Gabriela Cabezon Camara
(Charco Press, £9.99)
IN THE El Poso slum of Buenos Aires things are starting to change for the better. Its inhabitants organise in special committees, they create a system of canals filled with large and glistening carp to eat, they grow their own vegetables and they are learning to be self-sufficient.
El Poso (“The Sediment”) is turning into a tiny utopia and all of this is apparently thanks to a strange cement Virgin Mary statuette — the Slum Virgin — that sends divine messages to the people through a “medium,” the transvestite prostitute Cleo, who renounces life on the game to try to save his shanty-town community from impending destruction.
The fast-paced prose of Gabriela Cabezon Camara’s virtuoso debut novel takes the reader into a surreal and otherworldly slum that could exist anywhere in Latin America. The socially aware narrative is recounted in parts by the young and ambitious journalist Quity who, while reporting on the strange daily happenings in El Poso, ends up falling in love with Cleo, with whom she has a child.
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