Three stars? Four stars? I am honestly a little (a lot?) confused by this novel. I have read some articles online and have read two very different professional interpretations, and I agree with one of them (the more common one, woo hoo me??).

This is a coming-of-age novel of sorts. Only here a woman is looking back at the fears she had a s a child growing up in an upper middle class/upper class home in Mexico City. She had two older half sisters, and attended a private Catholic school. She was bullied at school and had an odd relationship with her mother (she shared her father with her sisters), who was a professional and respected artist. As a child, the narrator had a lot of fears. She was afraid of night noises (house creaks, etc), and constantly thought she heard footsteps. This is her BEFORE. Before becoming a woman, before having the rules and expectations of womanhood within her class and culture. Childhood was fun ad safety, my interpretation of the footsteps is they were her future--sneaking up on her. Womanhood and adulthood was responsibility, expectations, motherhood, menstruation, bras--the things tat caused her sisters to shut her out as they got older.She knew it was coming for her, but she didn't know what it meant. ( )

Splendid novel on childhood. Here´s where we understand Bolaño called her "the best woman writer of Mexico". ( )