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Claudia Pineiro is one of Argentina’s foremost writers, generally acknowledged as the queen of crime fiction. What she is also known for is the piercing scrutiny of contemporary society that underpins her work. After all, as she says, it is impossible to write about a crime without also writing about the society in which it takes place.
Elena Knows, is her 2022 International Booker-nominated novel. Translated by Frances Riddle. This was a novel that had me spellbound. Elena, an older woman in her sixties, has an advanced case of Parkinson’s. She is entirely dependent on her medication for mobility. The stiffness in her neck means she is perpetually hunched over, incapable of lifting her head beyond a point. As the novel opens, Elena is dealing with a tragedy. Her daughter Rita, a school teacher in the local Catholic school, who lives with Elena and is her caregiver, is dead - found hanging in the church belfry. There is not much of an investigation. Rita’s death is ruled a case of suicide, the police find no evidence to suggest otherwise. Elena is not convinced. She knows her daughter and she is determined to make the police see that she could not possibly have killed herself, that this was a case of murder.
Except that there is very little Elena can do on her own, because of the painful limitations imposed on her body by her condition. The novel unfolds in the course of one day, as Elena sets out to travel across Buenos Aires to find the one person she believes might help her in pushing for an investigation in to Rita’s death by lending “her body” to Elena as it were, since Elena has no control over hers. As she makes this risky and difficult trip, her body betraying her repeatedly, we are taken back to the life that Elena and Rita shared, and their complicated and fractious relationship. Elena, while confident that as a mother, she “knows”, is gradually forced to confront what she “doesn’t know”.
A powerful novel about motherhood and its myths, religious dogma, and a woman’s right over her own body.
“No one knows as much about her daughter as she does, she thinks, because she’s her mother, or was her mother. Motherhood, Elena thinks, comes with certain things, a mother knows her child, a mother knows, a mother loves. That’s what they say, that’s how it is.”