Cross-Stitch

September 11, 2023
The narrator of Barrera’s intelligent if slack debut novel (after the book-length essay Linea Nigra) looks back on her lifelong friendships with two women after one of them dies. When Mila, a writer and new mother, learns Citlali drowned off the coast of Senegal, she reflects on the formative years they shared with their other friend Dalia. As teens, the trio traveled from Mexico to Europe, visiting the cultural highlights of London and Paris while negotiating new suitors and boyfriends back home, and sharing a stint working for a literacy campaign in the impoverished village of Yospí. What unites the teenage girls, beyond their mutual interest in art and travel, is a love of embroidery. The multilayered novel alternates between the story of the girls’ lives and an elegant study of embroidery’s significance in Mayan myths, the novels of Jean Rhys, the sculptures of Louise Bourgeois, and more. Though the narrative lacks urgency or tension, a thread of intrigue emerges as Mila speculates that Citlali’s abusive father might have been what drove her to leave Mexico for good. Readers will be more satisfied by Barrera’s erudite nonfiction. Agent: Andrea Montejo, Indent Literary.

September 15, 2023
Writer and mother Mila, one of a trio of middle-school classmates who became close friends, reflects on their once-interwoven lives after a member of the trio dies unexpectedly. As the book opens, Mila hears her cell phone buzz. It's Citlali's aunt, writing to tell Mila that Citlali has drowned in the sea in Senegal and her ashes will be brought back to Mexico. Dalia, too, has been informed. Mila, Dalia, and Citlali first met as preteens in Mexico City and stayed friends even as their personal and professional paths diverged: Dalia moved to Spain; Citlali settled in Brazil but moved around while working for an environmental NGO; Mila remained in Mexico. Stricken with shock and grief at the news, Mila agrees to help organize a sort of memorial service--she calls it a "leave-taking ceremony"--for Citlali. More information about the trio is revealed as Mila contemplates their individual and communal bonds, tracing the history of their friendship from its inception in junior high to the present. Two defining events soon emerge: an adult literacy campaign for which Mila, Dalia, and Citlali volunteered around the beginning of high school, and a trip to Europe to visit Citlali about six months after Mila and Dalia started college. Hindered by a low score on the entrance exam for her chosen academic track, Citlali had instead elected to take a job picking grapes in France, one in a series of offbeat decisions. Her private struggles are seen through Mila's eyes, referenced but never belabored; this limited context for her death feels true to life rather than unsatisfying. Translated from the Spanish by MacSweeney, the novel evokes the awkward process of growing up, chronicling adolescence and the transition into adulthood vividly and frankly. While their personalities and interests vary--differences that cause more than a few tiffs--the women share the love for embroidery implied by the title. Passages about embroidery and other forms of stitching divide sections of the novel, though any symbolic link to the events of the plot is not obvious. A somber book about the formative, irreplicable experiences shared between friends and the agony and bewilderment of loss.

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October 1, 2023
The multi-talented Barrera, author of the memoir Linea Nigra (2022), turns to fiction in this introspective translation from the original Spanish. As the novel opens, Mila has just found out that her dear friend, Citlali, has drowned. From there, Mila recounts her memories of her past with Citlali and their third close friend, Dalia. The story splits into three narratives: Mila's present, plus two separate experiences. As students, the three women participated in a tutoring program that took them from Mexico City to the Yucatan, where they bonded over a shared love of embroidery. A few years after that, Dalia and Mila visited Citlali in Paris. Dalia, a headstrong risk-taker, is balanced by the cautious Mila, and Citlali is tender and fragile. Mila doesn't understand how she could have missed Citlali's despair, yet as she examines her past, she realizes the signs were there all along. Mila punctuates her musings with vignettes about how stitching has connected women throughout history. Lovers of language and subtle character development will be enthralled.

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