Author(s): Paulette Jonguitud

Novel | Fiction Reductions | Read our reviews! | Mexico | Translated fiction | CB Editions

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THOMAS'S REVIEW:
“I don’t like surprises,” the narrator of Mildew says, “and since the last one had been an affair between my husband and my niece, I was not feeling in the mood for another one.” On the eve of her daughter’s wedding, a woman finds a green spot on her pubis. She scrapes at it half-heartedly but fails to remove it and it rapidly spreads over her lower body, a sort of mould or fungus about which she seems strangely not distressed but even seems to become rather fond of. As she wanders about her house, she wanders also through her memories, particularly concerning her niece, with whom she shares a name (and all the literary doubling that that implies), and the switching of her husband’s affections from the older to the younger Constanza. The further the mildew spreads, the less grip the narrator has on the habitual patterns of her life, or, rather, the less she is gripped by them, and the more her memories are shown to be arbitrary, partial, unreliable, self-seeking (or self-harming). As the mildew spreads, the reader, too, finds their grip on facts loosened and the psychological forces which underlie the narrative send filaments up through the pores in the surface of reality and softly overwhelm both its momentum and its meaning. Despite the great psychological weight carried in this book it is written very lightly and directly, with a sharp pen and not a wasted word, and the damp claustrophobia of the narrator’s mind is perfectly expressed, as is the release she (sort of) experiences as the mould or fungus becomes a symptom and externalises whatever it is that it is a symptom of. Mildew shares the spare, immediate, resonant writing with much other recent Mexican fiction, such as Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World.

{THOMAS}