Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda
Mexican fiction
Original title – Perras de reserva
Translators – Heather Cleary and Julia Sanches
Source = Personal copy
Now, when the longlist came out for the booker international, this was one of the books I was vaguely looking at getting myself. It has a rather eye-catching cover with shocking Pink, and the choice of Font on the cover catches the eye. I have read a lot of great female writers from Mexico in the last few years in the time I have been blogging it is amazing how many writers have become available to us in English, and this writer is an activist for females in Mexico to have abortions, which is something I strongly support so I know ew this collection would be for me it is a colle action of short stories with a loose connection between them all. Now, I have to say the collection actually tale ends with the two best stories as the first and last for me, but the others all deal with the everyday horrors and violence for females in Mexico these days.Have you a favourite recent Mexican writer ?
Okay, I made that up … There is no Gerardo. I just wanted to add some romance to the story. I got pregnant from a one-night stand. I didn’t know the guy’s name and had zero interest in finding out. His performance was underwhelming. Yup, I got knocked up by a terrible lay.
I’m the kind of girl who gets used as an argument against abortion. The kind who hooks up with the first guy who sweet-talks her on a night out. The kind who should be on birth control, get her tubes tied, or keep her legs closed. I let total strangers grope me. I like parties, getting wasted, making a drunken ass of myself.
The opening story trying to find a way to lose her baby
The book opens with a girl wanting an abortion, and instead like in the not-so-distant [past in the UK, her only route is an old wives tale or a sort of back street treatment we used to see in the UK. This is an eye-opening, horrific look at one girl’s journey to lose an unwanted birth. The other stories see us meeting women and girls trying to keep one step ahead of the violent world they find themselves in, whether that is as a teen feeling a gang is the closest to family to others when you are a mother alone or not the world this is the harsh reality faced by many women in Mexico in a way it becomes like a recurring nightmare the stories blend at times bleed into one another as violence becomes almost the norm to us as the reader. Til the final tale, whix=ch is like all the rest but with added urgency to remind you once again of the horrors facing women in this violent world. Memories bleed onto the page here and on Facebook in the story itself.
At seven in the morning, I stumbled across a news story that broke me. They’d found a body in the river. It was in a black plastic bag, in an advanced state of decomposition. The water had kept the bag hidden, but when it receded, two feet appeared. Your feet. A few kids passing by noticed the smell of decay and called the police. The corpse was naked.
It’s hard for me to say your corpse. Women’s clothing was found nearby. A denim skirt. A black T-shirt. One sneaker. It was you.
No one is ever ready for the death of someone they love. But this wasn’t death. It was theft. You were stolen, violently ripped from my side. I broke down. I’d never cried like that before because I’d never felt like that before. Rage and sadness, all at once. When I remember that moment, I still feel the knot in my throat. It was terrible. I can’t write about it. It ripped me apart. An unidentified woman. You were one more body in this genocide. Another nameless woman adding to the death count. Another pink cross.
The end story more death as we see them mark with crosses!!
Now I have spent ages since I read this book how to best describe it bu then reading the above, it misses the dark humour that you also get in this type of world, gallows humour, the black humour you have to have to get by because otherwise, this book is the equivalent of a sort of literary waterboarding for the read quick breaths bother the violence. All that entails happens in this world. This book, I feel, would stand out for the judges as it is edgy, vile, funny, dark, and full of the violent side of the world. As I said in the middle of the book, this is normal to you as the reader reading reoccurring horrors in the tales I will never know other than in these pages, so if you want a ride into a world that will make you feel uncomfortable, read this, for me, this is what the booker is there for to highlight those books that are different that stand out like this book. Have you read this book?
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