La encomienda

A disturbing novel about uncertainty, memories, fears, loneliness, family relationships and longing for the future... The narrator of these pages lives five thousand kilometers from her native country, works for an advertising agency, wants to apply for a scholarship to write in the Netherlands and has regular videoconferences with her sister. She sends her parcels, packages that include food, drawings of her nephews and from time to time a surprise, like an old photograph. Often the food arrives rotten. A series of figures and events will reveal the fissures that open up in the protagonist's daily life: the reception of a huge box that is difficult to open, a cat that walks around the building where she lives, the neighbors who are absent and those who knock on her door, the son of a neighbor, the comings and goings of her boyfriend, a homeless man... And, as she herself says: «How quickly the shell of a routine shatters. Any routine, no matter how solid, is destroyed by the unexpected.» With a masterful hand and remarkable economy of means, Margarita García Robayo leads the reader through the labyrinth of her protagonist and narrator in this disturbing novel that speaks of uncertainty, memories, fears, loneliness, family relationships, prospects for motherhood and longing for the future. A book of contained intensity, full of insights rather than certainties.