The calf

BOOK REVIEW

THE CALF

Author: Aurora Freijo Corbeira From the reader report by: Margareth Santos

La ternera is a punch in the stomach. As much for the precision of its writing as for its content. A chromatic, tactile, olfactory and visceral novel.

All that without making use of easy narrative resources, nor of scatology or the profane verb. On the contrary, the work aligns a fabric hard to stitch together: the childish vision and the mediation of the adult voice of the teller.

And this suture is woven by a direct and still poetic, although painful writing. It portrays the story of a 5-year-old girl who suffers sexual abuse by a neighbor —a butcher— with whom she snacks every afternoon, because of the busy life of her father, a salesman worried about his customers, and a poet mother, distracted in her verses.

The so busy parents ignore what is happening right in front of their eyes, and are unable to perceive the child’s process of self-absorption, marked by long silences, growing apathy, and acts of resistance, such as not eating meat anymore.

This self-defense mechanism shapes powerful images, such as the scene in which the mother prepares a piece of porterhouse meat (hence the title): the domestic act sparks off a long reflection triggered by the nauseating sight of the posters advertising the types of meat in the butcher’s shop: the meat on sale, choice meat, prime meat, in other words, porterhouse meat.

As the girl elaborates the distinction of porterhouse meat as expensive, tender, tasty, she comes to the striking conclusion that she was not only first-class meat, but, above all, “first-time” meat.

The powerful image is built in a fragmentary and synesthetic fashion: the reader can even hear the uncomfortable silences disseminated throughout her “micro-reports”, and get entangled in the viscosity of a work that ends as uncomfortable as in its beginning, with a vigorous and necessary prose.

PUBLISHED IN NEW SPANISH BOOKS DE | FR

EDITORIAL ANAGRAMA

Title THE CALF LA TERNERA

Author Aurora Freijo Corbeira Genre Literature Pages 128

ISBN 978-84-33999-14-6 Year of publication 2021 Number of editions 1 Language Spanish Spanish retail price 16,90 €

Author’s biography: Aurora Freijo Corbeira has a degree in Philosophy from the Autonomous University of Madrid and a Master’s in Advanced Studies in Philosophy, specialising in Ontology and the Contemporary World, from Complutense University. She has published articles in the psychoanalytic magazine Quipu and in the digital magazine Bandeàpart (of which she is also one of the directors), as well as in the educational collection Acting is possible (Actuar es Posible). She has translated Leibniz’s Essays on Teodicea and is the author of the Lost for Literature (Perdidos para la Literatura, 2011), So much light: Pasolini (Tanta luz. Pasolini, 2015) and Be careful, Socrates is coming (Cuidado, Sócrates se acerca, 2016). She has been a Student Residence fellow, a Philosophy teacher and a teacher training advisor. An expert in cultural management and publishing at the Carlos III University School of Arts, she is a member and founder of the publishing house Las migas también son pan.

Synopsis: The story of the abuse of a young girl is told with extraordinary literary force in this uncomfortable and necessary book. A single gesture was enough to turn her into a helpless calf. She was small, too small to know that she had been put in a place that was not right for her. The abyss filled her sea-like eyes and her gaze was full of shock. Her house became a nothing place. The house next door —the friendly house— has turned her into meat for the first time, before she was old enough. Now everything is loneliness. The calf defends herself with the ability to tell the story of a reality that nobody wants to see: a story of abuse. She talks of pain and shame, enforced guilt and silence as a form of resistance. This highly moving, literary novel is an uncomfortable read, hard and tender at the same time.

Publisher: Editorial Anagrama S. A. Founded in 1969, this publishing house has released around 4,000 titles. Its particular mission is to search for new voices in fiction and essay writing, reviving neglected or lost 20th century classics and exploring the political, moral and cultural debates of our time.

Publishing rights available from: Editorial Anagrama S.A. - CIF A58134388 Pedro de la Creu 58, Barcelona www.anagrama-ed.es/libro/narrativas-hispanicas/ la-ternera/9788433999146/NH_661 Contact: Paula Canal [paula@indentagency.com] Phone: (+34) 678 592 459