A book a day: Alicia Fenieux Campos: Extinct

Idioma original: Español

Year of publication: 2023

Valuation: recommendable

Five stories written to remember the women we could have been make up this brief and recommendable Extinct by Chilean Alicia Fenieux Campos. Women of various ages but always subject to the weight of conventions, prejudices, modesty or impositions, although always trying to overcome, in one way or another, the situation in which they live.

Open the volume Wilhelmina, A woman of about 40-45 years old who seems like a copy of so many others. A rebirth, disorientation and misgivings are the main characters in a story that is, simply, “pleasant” to read.

Level up Grandma Yaya, a more striking and formally daring story in which who we are and who we seem to be, along with inherited guilt, take center stage.

The author insists on playing with dualities and different worlds in Marianela, A story about a 16-year-old girl who becomes a foreign body surrounded by “good people.” It is an initiation story in which the search for a sense of belonging and the fear of difference play a key role.

Conchita I find it somewhat less interesting. The awareness of a dependency, somewhat self-imposed, is the breaking point of a story that leaves me with a somewhat bitter taste in my mouth, due to some unexplored possibilities that seem to be left by the wayside.

Close Yasna Negrete Negrete, a circular story in which the author displays a dark humour that she had already hinted at in previous stories and which suits a story about the desire to belong and to escape from a more or less dark past perfectly.

In summary, Extinct It is a collection of realistic texts with which Fenieux Campos draws a portrait, without Manichaeism or easy speeches and with a good dose of humor, of strong women (despite being screwed) who try to make their way in a dual Chile and world.