Liliana Heker
Several of the stories in that book
were among the most memorable I’ve ever read. Heker is a master of magical
realism, but she has her own take on it. The first story in the book, “Georgina
Requini: or the Chosen One,” telescopes the entire life of a wannabe actress
into 30 pages. It’s breathtaking, zooming from one phase of the main character’s
life to the next, in and out of her fantasies, so we rarely know where and when
the action takes place until we get our bearings a couple of sentences into
each episode. That puzzle is one of the most fun aspects of the story. But this
disorientation also mirrors the main character’s bewilderment about how her
fate plays out. The story is a technical tour de force, warping the space/time
continuum, but it’s also deeply moving and knowing, a combination that magical
realism doesn’t always deliver.
The title story of The Stolen Party is also amazing. More
in the vein of naturalist fiction, it tells the tale of a nine-year-old girl
who is the daughter of a maid, but gets invited to the birthday party of the
girl whose family employs her mother. I won’t give away the shocking ending.
Julio Cortázar, like Heker, an
Argentine master of fiction, said about her writing, “Liliana Heker is a
magician. She turns little daily objects and trivial events into pieces of
gold. She is wise, she is frightening. She must be read, she must be read.”
Also available in English is
Heker’s novel about the period of the dictatorship and the Dirty War in
Argentina, The End of the Story, translated
by Andrea Labinger. The novel caused a stir both on the left and the right, because
one of the revolutionary characters is subjected to torture, turns informant, and
then becomes the lover of her torturer.
Heker was born in Buenos Aires in
1943 to a family that emigrated from Europe. In response to a question about
her roots, Heker responded: “My
maternal grandparents arrived as children in 1889 on the Weser, a mythical ship that brought the first Jewish immigrants to
Argentina” from Eastern Europe. Her ancestors settled in
Entre Ríos province, home of the Jewish gauchos.
Interestingly, Heker began her academic career as a
student of physics. That might explain her comfort in playing with the rules of
time and space in her fiction. She was also a literary prodigy, publishing her
first stories at the age of 17. She’s well known in Argentina for cofounding
two important literary journals: El
Escarabajo de Oro (The Golden Beetle), and El Ornitorrinco (The Platypus). Her work has been translated into
numerous languages, and fortunately for us, English is one of them.
My next blog will be an exclusive interview with Liliana Heker, featuring information not available elsewhere in
English.
Other recent posts about writing topics:
Writers I Can't Stop Reading, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Part 4, Part 5
How to Get Published: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10
Putting Together a Book Manuscript, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Working with a Writing Mentor: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
How to Deliver Your Message: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Why Write Poetry? Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Using Poetic Forms, Part 1: Introduction; Part 2: The Sonnet; Part 3, The Sestina;
Part 4, The Ghazal; Part 5, The Tanka
