Vengo a buscar las herramientas

Vengo a buscar las herramientas

Novel
Corregidor, 2021
240 pages

There are times when death gives meaning to life, and even enhances it… This story is vital because of the will to survive, the desire to continue and also to know how to come to an end.

Told in two times: deep Patagonia, in 1966, and the neighborhood of Villa Crespo, in 2019, the chapters alternate until they meet.

A family in Patagonia, in a school on the outskirts, notices that the people do not bury their dead and the mountain wants to get rid of them. In a Buenos Aires neighborhood, a single mother goes out to look for help to dig a well at dawn. The previous midnight, her little daughter, on the verge of sleep, talks with her friends about the cat’s burial.

Three stories that alternate, a novel that is braided. Life is not without death, but childhood is forever.

Hopenhayn masterfully and sensitively links two different places and two different times. Turned into an extraordinary novel, the stories come to life. Mónica López Ocón, Tiempo Argentino

Good novels accomplish this: they capture a single voice, and with it, they reflect an entire world. If the voice is that of a child and the world reflected is that of childhood, the result is this marvel of curiosity and fears and desires that intertwine. Martín Kohan

A beautiful novel, political and poetic, that bets on language and storytelling. Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

In its writing, Vengo a buscar las herramientas reminded me of the best lines of Clarice Lispector, with a style that combines reference and perfection in each sentence.It is not poetry, neither metaphorical garnish, but the elegance of language: the passion for the precise word. Luciano Lutereau

The author’s voice is poetic and lush, and inherits elements of magical realism, which are triggered by contact with the harsh and imposing nature. A deep and intense novel, which can be enthusiastically recommended. Oscar Aimar, El Puntal

There are times when death gives meaning to life, and even enhances it. Hopenhayn’s novel is a vital account of the will to survive, the desire to continue and also to know how to come to an end. Perfil

Silvia Hopenhayn has the gift of finding the right literary scene to show an idea, a sensation, a hidden sense of reality. Liliana Heer

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