Roots spread across the foundations: trees and walls become one with the surrounding hills. Chickens peck at the remains of the cupboards, bugs nest in the hollows of dried-out shoes, and dogs curl up in abandoned sheets that still smell of their owners.

Soldiers from different wars and the ill-fated lover prowl the surroundings: at dusk, the whispering wheel of their troubles can be heard. But the family that the house longs for is silent: Lucero, his wife, and their four children—why don’t they come back?

Precise and delicate, this novel combines the poetry of the coast with a bawdy repertoire of anachronisms.

Selva Almada achieves the feat of making the passage of time audible and nature’s stubbornness to recover what men took centuries ago palpable.

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