Description

Propelled by female desire, shaped by the violence of the male gaze, and inspired by the endless vitality of old stories remade anew, Restoration takes on Bluebeard, Salvador Elizondo, Juan Rulfo, Angela Carter, Octavio Paz, Mariana Enriquez, and Amparo Davila to produce a novel of obsession, reclamation, and romance gone very, very wrong.Jasmina has been hired by her maybe-boyfriend to restore his family home, a grubby, abandoned time capsule where a great artist once lived. As she moves from room to room – scrubbing, scraping, plastering over cracks – the stories inhabiting them awaken, and the lives of the women who came before her begin to overlap with her own. Who is the woman in the photograph? And what secrets linger in that last locked room?Restoration is a ghost story with porous borders, between Jasmina and these forgotten women, between the novel and us. And the questions Barrera asks may be about what’s behind our own barred door.

Publisher Review

“A vibrant and singular voice, combined with an extraordinary technical maturity and a fascinating symbolic density.” -Irene Vallejo , author of PAPYRUS

“Restoration is a thriller, not only thematically but – equally powerful – stylistically: Ave Barrera writes the same way Min engages in her restoration work: taking care of every word, every detail, as if it were a question of ‘contradicting death’.” -Literal: Latin American Voices

“Perhaps the most terrifying novels of all are those that give us a clear and authentic reflection of ourselves.” -Letras Libres

“The layers that make up this story range from the young protagonist’s obsessive love for a man, the architectural process of restoring an old mansion, the ghosts of the past that inhabit each character, to a face-to-face dialogue with Farabeuf, the famous work by Salvador Elizondo.” -Excelsior

“Nothing is gratuitous in this narrative with secret passages that each reader will make their own. We will have to follow this author. With this tremendous novel we have no choice.” -Crash

“[Barrera] delves into the inadequacies, indulgence and regrets that accompany both women of today and the past: love as a construct and sometimes as a kind of sect that demands sacrifices from its most naive members.” -Marvin

“The author pulls at both ends of the rope – between curiosity and fear, seduction and humiliation, sacrifice and revenge -and she does so with elegance, originality and intelligence.” -La Razon de Mexico

“Beautiful… tough… terrifying.” -Tierra Adentro

“As with today’s feminist struggles, our central character looks at the connection between past and present violence.” -El Economista

“Ave Barrera carries out a meticulous architectural construction in which each element serves to support the others, using words with the care that a good craftsperson dedicates to the tools and materials necessary for a restoration.” -La Marea