Elena Knows

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What are the different ways you’ve seen love expressed. Have you seen love expressed through fighting? CP: Sometimes I’m asked if my latest book, Cathedrals, reflects these changes in the law. And I have to explain that, ever since Elena Knows, these themes have been present in my work. Themes of the woman and her place in the world; of the roles assigned from the traditional places and discomfort with those assigned roles. In All Yours, which was my first book, the issue of abortion appears. A teenage girl considers having an abortion and decides not to go through with it. Just because it’s legal and a person can have an abortion safely doesn’t mean that every person (or every literary character) will choose to do it. But, yes, they can consider it, and, in this case, it’s a teenage girl who has to consider doing it clandestinely. In Thursday Night Widows, there’s the issue of domestic violence. In Elena Knows, the issue of abortion again. It’s one of my obsessions. These themes don’t appear in everything I’ve written, but they’re issues that repeat themselves, just as themes repeat themselves in other writers’ works. Other themes that I often return to are the idea of being caged in, hypocrisy, concern with what other people will say. But certainly, the place that women occupy and the roles that pigeonhole them into certain positions—these themes appear in almost all my books. But they present themselves to me on an unconscious level. I don’t know why these specific elements appeared in that setting with this woman who I saw sitting in her kitchen waiting for her Parkinson’s medication to take effect so she could stand up, so that she could get up and walk. Yes, she had a daughter. And that daughter didn’t want to have children, but she also had a very brutal opinion about abortion and the obligation other women have to be mothers. Still, I didn’t consciously think of this book in those terms. It’s like when you dream. You dream, and you can start to pull a thread and say to yourself, “OK, I dreamed this because of this; I dreamed about this person because I ran into them on the street, but I switched what happened to them with what happened to another person.” You mix everything up in dreams. In that initial stage of the creative process, I think there’s something similar. For me it was this woman in her kitchen, waiting for a pill to let her move, to begin to function, because she had Parkinson’s. Rita and Elena must face the monumental task of proving Elena’s disability for the insurance company. At one point Rita asks the agent,

And on that day we will finally realise that we are all alone, forced to face ourselves, with no lies left to cling to.’ The Argentinian journalist and star author lures her readers in with the deceit of a crime novel starring a Miss Marple-like elderly mother-turned-investigator, only to then discuss the personal and societal implications of chronic illness and women's issues - excellent move, Claudia Piñeiro (fun fact: Piñeiro is the third most translated Argentinian author, after Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar). The title-giving Elena - who, like all of us, is under the impression that she has figured all kinds of things out, thus amassing lots of false convictions - is very ill with Parkinson, when her daughter and caregiver Rita is found hanging in the bell tower of the church. Elena is convinced that Rita, a devout Catholic who feared lightning, would never have gone to the tower in the rain to commit the sin of suicide. Have you ever been overwhelmed by kindness? Where have you seen kindness dispel hate or antagonism or obstinance or other force against kindness? How do you spread kindness? QuotesOn the surface, Elena Knows appears to be a mystery. However, it investigates more than Rita's death. It examines the impact of a chronic brutal illness on the mother-daughter relationship when the daughter becomes the caregiver. It also looks at how religious dogma influences life choices. Argentinian author Claudia Pinera pushes the boundaries of crime writing in her finely crafted novel Elena Knows. The story centers on the death of Elena's 43-year-old, devoutly religious daughter. Rita, who the police found hanging in the local church belfry. They ruled her death a suicide. However, Elena, 63, who suffers from advanced stages of Parkinson' Disease, does not believe her daughter killed herself. Due to the limitations of her illness, she decides to seek the assistance of a woman, Isabel, whom her daughter helped twenty years ago.

If you are reading this before August 31, 2021 then there is still time to register for the book launch event for Elena Knows via https://mailchi.mp/7a049f1c935b/elena... or https://charcopress.com/events/2021/8... In this way, crime and morality enter a convoluted space of complex intertwining. What could the real crime in this novel be, in the absence of one? Is it not, perhaps, that Father Juan – in the name of Christian morals – denominates Rita’s alleged suicide as a sin, and those unable to accept the harsh finality of death foolish? Is it not that Rita – herself defined by strict moral precepts, herself without child – insists on Isabel having her child, notwithstanding the latter’s certainty on wanting to proceed with abortion, and notwithstanding Rita’s complete ignorance on the matter of Isabel’s circumstances? But you only know something once you’ve experienced it in your life, life is our greatest test.” chapter 2, section III. I walk when I’m reading, or I read when I’m walking. As if I belonged to the peripatetic school. My father used to do the same. I might be inside the house or out on the street. Or even on a treadmill. To date, I haven’t had an accident or crashed into anyone, miraculously! The Hummingbird has captivated European readers, selling more than 300,000 copies in Italy alone and making Veronesi only the second author to win the Premio Strega, Italy’s most prestigious literary award, twice. The film adaptation is in production in Italy, starring Nanni Moretti (winner of the Cannes Palm d’Or) and Bérénice Bejo (nominated for an Oscar for her role in The Artist) and the novel hashe work has already been translated into 24 languages, with Elena Pala’s English translation lauded by Ian McEwan among others.

Translated from Spanish (Argentina) by Frances Riddle (Charco Press, 2021)

Abortion rights activists in particular, emphasize the importance of having the right to control our bodies. Amnesty International’s campaign My Body My Rights, supports rights to choices on sexuality and reproduction, access to abortion, access to sexual and reproductive health services and freedom from discrimination and violence. And in the end, Rita sends Elena to the salon for an extensive treatment from hair coloring to waxing. Very pleased to see this book not just longlisted but now shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022!

Piñeiro's portrays Elena's symptoms in painstaking detail, her life and her tortuous journey to the capital regulated by the medication schedule for the levodopa pills she takes to control her symptoms and to allow her to function, the novel itself divided into three parts, Morning (Second Pill), Midday (Third Pill) and Afternoon (Fourth Pill) (the first having been taken on rising in the early hours). We are polite people so we explained that we discuss such 'stories' about invented characters regularly, and that if he is patient and listens to the discussion, he might see how useful not only for understanding other people but also for understanding ourselves such 'made-up stories' can be. This most recent translation is published by Charco Press, an excellent promoter of translated Latin American literature from which I have especially enjoyed several works and discovered new favourite writers such as Luis Sagasti and Karla Suárez in recent months.

Now that the one-child policy has been relaxed, the stories of these illegal children will soon be a part of China’s national collective memory. But to those who grew up tainted with this humiliation, the scars are permanent. One is Chinese writer Shen Yang, who wrote her story in part to extinguish the nightmares that still haunt her. From the start, I was consumed by this story. The issues raised by Pineiro in this story are women’s rights, especially abortion; furthermore, motherhood is studied, especially mother-daughter relationships, along with the challenges of the ill and aging body. The bureaucracy involved to get Elena the care that she required is heart-wrenching. I’m something else, something that doesn’t have a name, someone she cares about like you might care about a friend, or a neighbour or a roommate or travel companion. But that’s all we are. Travel companions. I don’t know what it feels like to be a mother, Elena, can you tell me?” chapter 2, section III. A subtle and skillful exploration to how far women have the right to control their own bodies” — The Conversation!

Leky’s coming-of-age novel, told in three sections set a decade apart, is populated by oddball characters with outlandish superstitions and peculiar verbal tics – “people who have been fitted into this world askew”, she says. Her taste for eccentrics was fashioned by her upbringing: her father is a psychoanalyst, her mother a psychotherapist, and while her parents weren’t allowed to talk about their patients in public, they discussed cases in bed at night. “I stood behind their bedroom door and listened,” Leky recalls. People like your daughter, who didn’t even know me, your daughter who didn’t have the nerve to become a mother herself but who treated my body as if it were hers to use, just like you, today, you didn’t come here to settle a debt but to commit the same crime all over again twenty years later. You came here to use my body.” chapter 2, section III. The Pew Research Center conducted a survey on the views of American Catholics towards abortion in 2022.As Elena makes her way across town we catch glimpses of the past. We learn about her life with Rita. We see what a strain such an illness can become on not just the patient but the caregiver as well. Mother-daughter relationships are never a breeze and no less so under such circumstances. What does it mean to be a parent once you have lost your child? We learn more about this debt that Elena is going to collect. Along the way, I felt that this was a cautionary tale. Never, ever should we assume that we know what anyone else is going through. Unless perhaps we walk along in their shoes for a time - much as we did with Elena on this day. We must defend our personal freedoms – they are not to be given away carelessly or taken from us so thoughtlessly. I can’t say anything more other than I believe this was brilliantly written! Please read this book! As a writer born in Argentina there are inescapable names, such as Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Juan José Saer, Alejandra Pizarnik, Ricardo Piglia, and although it is hard to point to their exact impact on my work other than as a sum of reading of our best literature, the signs of their influence are certainly there. If I had to say which one of our great authors has influenced the way I write more directly, I’d say Manuel Puig. The whole universe of Puig is one I feel very close to: the worlds he created, the secrets, the things left unsaid, his love for cinema, the political aspect to his literature, the place occupied by those who aren’t at the heart of power in society, unexplained appearances, the deterioration of the body, his humour, the emotional world of his characters, his concern for language and for breaking writing conventions.