In the nightmarish Buenos Aires of the early 80s, a teenage girl faints as a way to stop the world in its tracks. Her father dies, her mother is shattered by grief, and even as she is haunted by the presence of death, she begins her journey of initiation into sex, drugs, sisterhood and love. In this autobiographical fable, Szperling describes a feminine world where the masculine seems both unreal and impermanent, simultaneously desired and unwelcome.
The writing style combines an innocent tone with the description of crude and shocking events and has a hypnotic pull that sustains the reader’s interest throughout. Everything takes place in a dreamlike and hallucinatory atmosphere, which is poetic and highly evocative.