Before

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), show more 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. show less

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