BOTM September 2024 Slash and Burn

[Celia]

Salvadorian writer Claudia Hernández’s immersive novel, superbly translated by Julia Sanches, explores war and its aftermath from a female perspective. Hernández never states the setting is El Salvador, places are referred to as “the farm named after a horse” or “that place named after insects”, and her characters are unnamed. During the conflict, “not knowing a person’s real name or where they were from was a safety measure”. Instead, they are referred to as “mothers”, “daughters” and “sisters”. This lends a universality to the text, reminding us that the brutalities of war are the same the world over.

Reviewed by The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

[Gail]

Well, this is certainly not an "enjoyable" read. The book is a multi layered account of a woman, her daughters, her mother, and her and her daughter's fathers and their life during and after the civil war. All the characters, times and places are nameless (except for Paris, France) so I often got confused as to which daughter, which mother, which friend or which father. Hernández was purposeful in that confusion and in using that tactic for distancing and distraction. However, it also gave the story an oral flavor as if all the stories were being told in the kitchen and you already knew the characters so names were not required. The fact that there are no names also gives the overall story the sense that all the women in El Salvador lived with violent men, in violent times. Our characters are just one of thousands that went to the hills to fight, and won, and do not ultimately know what they won, if anything. Yet these women have a clear internal directive to bring up their daughters to survive in a world that can not be trusted to be predictable.
The style of the writing is not an easy flow either. There is a chopped cadence with few adverbs and adjectives, again, a kitchen discussion or an internal monologue that is just about getting some task done. It took me quite awhile to connect with the characters through these distancing measures but I did finally connect. I think it is an important woman's voice in Latin American literature.

[Amanda]

I couldn't find this one for free anywhere, so I think I might buy it for kindle and try to fit this one in this month. It sounds intriguing based on Gail's review and I haven't read an El Salvador book yet.

[Gail]

I read Joan Didion’s Salvador but it felt too much like an outsider’s voice for me to credit it as the only book from El Salvador for my list. I did find Slash and Burn in one of the college libraries. I hope you have enough points for it to be free on kindle.

[K]

Gail wrote: "Well, this is certainly not an "enjoyable" read. The book is a multi layered account of a woman, her daughters, her mother, and her and her daughter's fathers and their life during and after the ci..."
I agree, it is difficult,challenging. It did make me think about Didion's "Salvador", maybe I will get to that one soon.