‘Nancy’ by Bruno Lloret (translated by Ellen Jones)

Fiction – paperback; Giramondo; 144 pages; 2020. Translated from the Spanish by Ellen Jones.

It’s widely acknowledged that the letter X holds a special place in Elon Musk’s heart (assuming he has one). There’s SpaceX, Tesla’s Model X and the social media channel X (formerly known as Twitter). He even has a child named X AE A-XII, known as “X” for short.

The letter X is also popular with Chilean author Bruno Lloret if his debut novel, Nancy, is anything to go by.

First published in Chile in 2015 and translated into English by Ellen Jones in 2020, this striking novella uses X as literary “decoration” and a form of punctuation designed to slow the reader down, to force us to find the words amongst the proliferation of crosses and to contemplate them in a more regarded way.

The blurb on the back of the book, suggests X can be read “as multiplication symbols, scars, locations on a map, or as signs of erasure and the approach of death”.

To show you how the author uses the letter, here’s a relatively extreme example (from page 6) — not all the pages are as heavily marked as this:

Initially, this might seem visually intrusive to the reading experience — it’s certainly unconventional — but if you’re prepared to give it a try, you’re in for a real treat: Nancy is a beautiful and bittersweet novella about a woman looking back on her troubled life, and can easily be read in one sitting.

Looking back

Nancy is a widow who is dying of cancer. As she confronts her mortality, she reflects on her life and relationships, including her marriage to a “gringo”, who died in a tragic industrial accident, and her childhood and difficult adolescence in northern Chile.

Her teenage years were marred by the breakdown of her parents’ marriage and the unexplained disappearance of her beloved older brother, Pato — whom she describes as a “superhero” — outside a nightclub when he was 19 years old.

Basically left to fend for herself, Nancy keeps house for her father and her alcoholic uncle Aarón who moves in with them. She goes to school in the morning and spends her afternoons secretly swimming with friends at Playa Roja under the watchful eyes of a group of creepy old gringos. This is despite her father’s decree that she never leave the house (except to go to school) for fear something might happen to her.

He told me that the bodies of women had been showing up on the beach. Some of them washed in by the waves, others just buried up to their necks in the sand, their heads blue in the open air X Five had shown up that week alone X It’s best if you stay home, Nancy. You’re pretty, and we’ve no idea who’s behind it X (page 34)

Courage and determination

Against this background of endemic violence and the threat of being “disappeared”, Nancy’s father discovers religion when two young Morman missionaries come knocking at the door. Eventually, Nancy, who is a non-believer and sexually active (she loses her virginity to a gipsy called Jesulé, whom she adores), is also baptised into the Church of Latter Day Saints — even though her heart is not in it.

When she unwittingly stumbles upon the two young male missionaries locked in an amorous embrace, she films them for potential blackmailing purposes. This is but one example of Nancy’s canny way of holding power in a world that largely denies her this control.

The most striking thing about the story, however, is Nancy’s sexual agency and streetwise view of the world, her unwavering commitment to her father (even though he doesn’t always treat her kindly) and her quiet determination to just get on with things. “Feeling sad won’t change anything,” she claims (page 30)

Nancy is a sensitively told tale of living life in the margins against a backdrop of death and violence. It explores themes of trauma, identity, religion and the search for meaning, yet despite the oppressive nature of the narrator’s life, it feels empowering and optimistic.

Lisa from ANZLitLovers has also reviewed it.

I read this book as part of Reading Independent Publishers Month 4 #ReadIndies, hosted by Lizzy and Kaggsy. This event, which runs throughout February, is designed to showcase the books published by independent publishers across the world.

Giramondo Publishing is fast becoming my favourite indie press. It’s an Australian university-based publisher, which was founded in 1995 “to publish innovative and adventurous literary work that might not otherwise find publication because of its subtle commercial appeal”. You can find out more about them here.