Welcome to Litsy!

The first novel to appear in English by one of the most talked-about and critically acclaimed writers of new Mexican fiction. From a psychoanalyst's couch, the narrator looks back on her bizarre childhood--in which she was born with an abnormality in her eye into a family intent on fixing it. In a world without the time and space for innocence, the narrator intimately recalls her younger self--a fierce and discerning girl open to life's pleasures and keen to its ruthless cycle of tragedy. With raw language and a brilliant sense of humor, both delicate and unafraid, Nettel strings together hard-won, unwieldy memories--taking us from Mexico City to Aix-en-Provence, France, then back home again--to create a portrait of the artist as a young girl. In these pages, Nettel's art of storytelling transforms experience into inspiration and a new startling perception of reality. "Nettel's eye...gives rise to a tension, subtle but persistent, that immerses us in an uncomfortable reality, disquieting, even disturbing--a gaze that illuminates her prose like an alien sun shining down on our world." --Valeria Luiselli, author of "Sidewalks" and "Faces in the Crowd" "It has been a long time since I've found in the literature of my generation a world as personal and untransferable as that of Guadalupe Nettel." --Juan Gabriel VAsquez, author of "The Sound of Things Falling" "Nettel reveals the subliminal beauty within beings...and painstakingly examines the intimacies of her soul." --"Magazine LittEraire" "Guadalupe Nettel's storytelling power is majestic."--"Typographical Era" In Praise of "Natural Histories" "Five flawless stories..." --"The New York Times" "Nettel's stories are as atmospheric and emotionally battering as Checkhov's."--"Asymptote"