Carmen's Rust

Forced to submit her book to government censors, del Río carefully constructed her critique, setting the novel in Chile during the 1950s with artfully masked references and significant silences. Reminiscent of Kafka and Orwell, Carmen's Rust recounts a claustrophobic domestic nightmare-while tacitly attacking the bourgeois values and murderous control of the regime. Published on the thirtieth anniversary of the overthrow of Salvador Allende and available in English for the first time, this literary tour de force offers an astonishing portrait of dictatorship and political violence.

The literature written in Chile during the rule of General Augusto Pinochet remains largely unknown to English-speaking readers. One of the most important novels to emerge from that period, Ana María del Río's Carmen's Rust creates a gripping microcosm of the dictatorship. Carmen, a teenage girl, attempts to overcome the social isolation and guilt family matriarchs have instilled in her, as her budding sexuality forms a powerful resistance against their domestic control.

Forced to submit her book to government censors, del Río carefully constructed her critique, setting the novel in Chile during the 1950s with artfully masked references and significant silences. Reminiscent of Kafka and Orwell, Carmen's Rust recounts a claustrophobic domestic nightmare-while tacitly attacking the bourgeois values and murderous control of the regime. Published on the thirtieth anniversary of the overthrow of Salvador Allende and available in English for the first time, this literary tour de force offers an astonishing portrait of dictatorship and political violence.

Publishers Weekly

This brief, allegorical addition to the literature of dictatorship (published in Spanish in 1986) translates the horrors and injustices of life under Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile into an inventive, florid tale of family torment and repression. In the 1950s, Carmen, a beautiful and rebellious teenager, lives with her Aunt Malva, cousin Carlitos, Uncle Ascanio, grandmother and half-brother (who is the novel's narrator) in an elegant but decaying house in Santiago. Aunt Malva and Grandmother are uptight beings, insisting on maintaining the impression that all is well when the situation is clearly grim. Though they scrimp and save on toothpaste, they hire a pricey piano teacher for Carmen and pin labels from expensive clothing to Carlitos's shabby clothes so visitors will think he is well-dressed. More significantly, Carmen's incestuous relationship with her half-brother throws the matriarchy into a flurry. Aunt Malva and Grandmother banish Carmen to an isolated bedroom hidden from visitors. They invite a priest to absolve the girl of her sins, and she quickly spirals downward into self-loathing. "She was so pale she seemed like a mere memory of the girl she had once been," her half-brother laments. Eventually, Carmen kills herself. These characters' lives serve as penetrating reminders of the plight of Chileans under Pinochet. The suffering rebels, the brutal and delusional leader, the "innocent" bystanders left behind after the dissidents die-del Rio captures them all in miniature, with expressionistic flair. (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Ana María del Río was born in 1948. She studied literature at the Catholic University of Chile, and was a graduate student in Latin American Literature at Rice University and the University of Pittsburgh.