The first novel to appear in English by one of the most talked-about and critically acclaimed writers of new Mexican fiction. From a psychoanalyst's couch, the narrator looks back on her bizarre childhood-in which she was born with an abnormality in her eye into a family intent on fixing it. In a world without the time and space for innocence, the narrator intimately recalls her younger self-a fierce and discerning girl open to life's pleasures and keen to its ruthless cycle of tragedy.With raw language and a brilliant sense of humor, both delicate and unafraid, Nettel strings together hard-won, unwieldy memories-taking us from Mexico City to Aix-en-Provence, France, then back home again-to create a portrait of the artist as a young girl. In these pages, Nettel's art of storytelling transforms experience into inspiration and a new startling perception of reality."Nettel's eye…gives rise to a tension, subtle but persistent, that immerses us in an uncomfortable reality, disquieting, even disturbing-a gaze that illuminates her prose like an alien sun shining down on our world." -Valeria Luiselli, author of Sidewalks and Faces in the Crowd "It has been a long time since I've found in the literature of my generation a world as personal and untransferable as that of Guadalupe Nettel." -Juan Gabriel Vásquez, author of The Sound of Things Falling "Nettel reveals the subliminal beauty within beings…and painstakingly examines the intimacies of her soul." -Magazine Littéraire "Guadalupe Nettel's storytelling power is majestic."-Typographical Era In Praise of Natural Histories "Five flawless stories..." -The New York Times "Nettel's stories are as atmospheric and emotionally battering as Checkhov's."-Asymptote