Perla [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

*Possible Spoilers*

There have been many literary manifestations born out of Argentina's Dirty War (1976-82). Liliana Heker's Fin de La Historia, El (B) (Spanish Edition) is an excellent novel about two young women who have to come to grips with their oppossing views of the conflict. Juan Gelman wrote some beautiful poetry memorializing his missing son and daughter-in-law. Laura Restrapo's DEMASIADOS HEROES (Spanish Edition)explores some interesting aspects of the conflict, but ultimately fails as a memorable portrayal.Purgatorio (Spanish Edition) by Tomás Eloy Martínez also explores questions of survival guilt and memory. Elena Cabrejas's novel Algo Habran Hecho (Spanish Edition) is a moving and quite realistic story of the famous missing French nuns. There have also been some questionable novels that use the Dirty War as a historical backdrop but that completely fail in probing the depths of the historical time period and come across as hollow and meaningless (ie. The Unforgivable).

I list all these other novels because as a student of the Dirty War and its portrayal in literature, I have been waiting for a long time for a novel to come along that might capture the heavy weight of the time period, with all the social implications, and yet demonstrate a poetic vision far from the constraints of realism. While there are many good novels about the time period, I have been waiting for that novel that addresses the brutality of the time period in an artistic way, waiting for that novel that makes me feel the emotion of the time period as well as teach me about it. My wait is over.

PERLA is a gorgeous novel about the very heart of the Dirty War: the missing. The victims of the military dictatorship get a voice, a real hero who speaks out for them. The ghost figure is a homage to the fable-like writing of the magical realism literary style. He is memory, love, pain and anguish encarnate. The protagonist Perla goes through the predictable coming to terms with her identity in the novel, but the beautiful way that Carolina de Robertis dresses up this painful yet powerful enlightenment is what makes this novel true literature. The irony of her name does not go unnoticed, as "La Perla" was one of the most infamous concentration camps of the dictatorship. Like the camp, Perla herself is a place of torture as de Robertis takes the reader through her mental anguish in coming to grips with the truth of who she is. The reader feels her liberation at the end, literally escaping her own internal concentration camp. And like Perla the character, Buenos Aires has to recover from the time period as well. It's as if De Robertis were writing for the desaparecidos as well as for the soul of Buenos Aires, that beautiful city that has seen so much suffering. The prose is so poignant at times that I found myself rereading sentences, as one would reread a poem over and over.

The content is often brutal and there are episodes of sexuality that could have been toned down a bit. One has to remember, however, that the brutality of stealing babies from their mothers is a disturbing figurative rape of the mother's rights and while thematically these strong moments of the novel make perfect sense and there is nothing overtly gratuitous, I do recognize that these harsh themes may not be for all readers.

In my opinion, and I have read many novels about Argentina's Dirty War, Perla is the masterpiece.

If Perla was a theatrical production, I'd jump to my feet, applaud and shout "brava!" This visceral reaction - that something very special has just been experienced - is precisely how I felt upon closing the last page of this spellbinding book.

Where do I even begin? Perhaps with the title: Perla is a college-aged young woman whose father, a Navy Officer, was on the wrong side of the heinous Argentina Dirty Wars. During those wars, many innocent people simply disappeared; they were drugged and thrown out of airplanes, never to be seen again. At the book's beginning, Perla discovers that one of The Disappeared - a ghost, quite literally - has somehow found his way into her home.

There are plot twists to this coupling, surely, but it is not those twists that make this novel stand out. Ms. De Robertis explores something far more vital: what happens when a person we love has been the instrument of pain and suffering? How do we reconcile his heinous acts with the person who loves and nurtures us? What responsibilities do we have to him, to society in general, and most of all, to ourselves? Or, in Perla's own words, how can one move forward when "the crimes of my father-the crimes of the nation, also, crimes to which I had not given words -settled on me, rode my back drooped my shoulders, stuck to me and refused to wipe away."

Perla is forced into a delicate dance of trying to understand her father, extricate herself, potentially be his salvation as her father demands "absolution or amnesia or, at the very least, for continued love." Her inner journey to claim her place in the world - her very identity - leads to birth and a rebirth and connects her with who she is meant to be and who she will become.

In confident prose that reads like elegiac poetry, Ms. De Robertis creates word images that are downright exquisite. I often went back and read lines twice or three times, marveling at their beauty. And when I reached the end, I broke down in sobs, not because of a manufactured sad ending but because the story was so very powerful. I haven't had that reaction since reading Toni Morrison's Beloved. This masterpiece tackles all the big parts of life: love, suffering, redemption, identity, the need of belonging, and how we connect to each other. Although Ms. De Robertis has her own distinct voice, it called to mind the power of Jenny Erpenbeck's works and she is one of the authors I hold in highest regard. If I could give it 10 stars, I gladly would.

Let me begin by stating that reading this book had the same effect on me as visiting places like ESMA (the oft-mentioned clandestine detention center in the novel) or similar memory sites in Chile (which, like Argentina, also suffered under a bloody military dictatorship), such as Villa Grimaldi. I was left with the same emotions that I carried whenever I visited those places, meaning that oftentimes, while reading this book, I would have to take a break, get something to drink, go walk around, etc., because everything about it was just *too much.*

Let me also say that, until now, no book has ever made me break out in sobs in the middle of reading it.

Anyway, PERLA was positively phenomenal and far exceeded the already very high expectations that I had for it (I was already huge fan of de Robertis' debut THE INVISIBLE MOUNTAIN). When I saw that de Robertis was writing a novel about the desaparecidos (the disappeared) of Argentina, I started counting down the days until its release. The phenomenon of the extreme right-wing Cold War-era dictatorships in the Southern Cone (including the dictatorship in Argentina - the "National Reorganization Process") is a subject I've studied for years and, for the longest time, I've been thirsting for a truly excellent English-language novel about this subject. PERLA is it, and far more.

I won't rehash the plot, because that's what the book blurb is for (I also don't want to give away any spoilers, but if you are in any way familiar with the history of the Dirty War, you'll catch onto what Perla's "secret" is very early into the book). Instead I'll list some of the main things I loved about this book. Firstly, everyone was so real (character-wise). There were no cardboard cutouts representing particular viewpoints (when in cases like this, is really easy to do), whether that be the former Naval officer and his wife or the left-wing journalist boyfriend. Rather everyone, no matter who they are, was instead a fleshed-out human being, with both good and bad qualities. On this same note, de Robertis' portrayal of Perla's inner struggle is done very well and in a very realistic fashion.

Another thing I will commend de Robertis on is her portrayal of the oftentimes gut-wrenching scenes from the "mysterious houseguest's" point of view. I believe there is a fine line between staying true to what is historically accurate (and some extremely brutal things definitely happened to people who were made to disappear in Argentina) and gore and torture for the sake of gore and torture (aka "torture porn"). De Robertis, unlike many people, succeeded. I felt these scenes conveyed the true nature of the brutality during that era (as in, they did not soften it to make it more palatable to readers), but at the same time, I felt that she wrote these scenes in a respectful way that didn't want to include violence and gore for, well, the sake of violence and gore. This speaks very strongly of de Robertis' ability as a writer, because only very talented writers can pull this off, I believe. That being said, they were still extremely painful and difficult to read, even for me (and I've read tons of pretty graphic survivors testimonies from this time).

Lastly, I will say that it was so refreshing to read a book on this subject by someone who obviously knows the city of Buenos Aires and this particular period of Argentina's history. Too often, when I read novels about this subject, it is painfully apparent that the author has just skimmed the Wikipedia page on the Dirty War and has relied too heavily on the phenomenon of a repressive government disappearing people (which happened before the National Reorganization Process and continues to happen to this day, i.e. it is not something unique to Argentina) to fuel their story. I applaud de Robertis for her incredible and 110% accurate descriptions of Buenos Aires (I've spent a somewhat significant amount of time there and can attest to practically everything she says). I also loved, loved, LOVED how she included cultural tidbits of the time as well (i.e. she talks about Sui Generis, a popular Simon and Garfunkel-esque band in Argentina during the 1970s), which really shows that she knows what she's talking about.

Other notes:
- I loved the use of water as a reoccurring motif, the fact that the spirit was of the water and the water accompanied him wherever he went. I also loved how the "mysterious houseguest" was consistently thirsty (because one of the side effects of the electric shocks that were used as torture was extreme thirst - only you couldn't drink anything or else your insides would explode) and always wanted Perla to "feed" him water.

- The structure. It is non-linear, but I was absolutely in love with it and felt that it worked well for the story. The structure was actually one of my favorite parts of this book, because it kept you wanting to read, even if, like me, you'd already guessed the "secret" early on.

- At first I had trouble following the narrative as it shifted from Perla's POV to the spirit's POV, but it became easier the more I got engrossed in the story. It wasn't a problem at all after 2-3 chapters or so.