Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Parkinson's disease
15 min read
Central to the novel's plot and protagonist - Elena's Parkinson's disease shapes every aspect of her quest, from her physical limitations to how others perceive her. Understanding the medical reality enriches the reading experience.
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Dirty War
16 min read
Argentine state terrorism from 1976-1983 forms crucial historical backdrop for contemporary Argentine fiction. Piñeiro's crime novels often engage with themes of justice, institutional distrust, and hidden crimes that echo this period.
Claudia Piñeiro’s Elena Knows, translated by Frances Riddle, is beautiful and devastating. Those are the same words I used to describe Daisy Hildyard’s The Second Body; I’ve somehow been picking up books that reach me in a particularly emotional way, and I’m not sure I like it. Stop making me feel things, literature! It’s painful!
The Elena of the novel’s title is a woman in her 60s whose daughter, Rita, has recently died. She was found hanging in a church belfry. Everyone is convinced it was suicide — that’s exactly what it looks like — but Elena is sure it’s murder. Rita was scared of lightning and terrified at the possibility that lightning would strike the cross on the church roof, so she never went anywhere near churches on rainy days. The day she died was rainy, so it makes no sense that she would have hanged herself in a church on that day. Something else must have happened.
No one believes Elena, including the local police, although they do listen to her, if only to be polite. So she decides to take matters into her own hands. The problem is that she is suffering from Parkinson’s disease and can only move with the help of pills. She takes a pill in the morning, waits for it to take effect, and then is able to move very slowly and carefully for a little while until the pill wears off. She has to wait, immobilized, until it’s time for another pill. She’s losing control of her neck and back muscles, so she’s permanently hunched over, able to see only the floor and a little bit ahead of her and to the side.
All she can think of to do to prove that her daughter was murdered is enlist the help of a woman named Isabel who owes her a favor — we don’t learn why for a while — but she hasn’t seen Isabel in years and has to travel across Buenos Aires to find her.
So she sets off on a journey, and it’s one of the most suspenseful reading experiences I’ve had in a long time. How in the world is this woman going to journey by herself across Buenos Aires, a trip that includes walking blocks to the train station, catching a train, and then hoping she finds her way after that? We follow her as
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