Love notes from Siel is a weekly newsletter from Siel, who used to live in Los Angeles but is currently traveling around. If you love the notes, subscribe for free.
Dear friend —
If ever you should find yourself heartbroken, I recommend treating yourself to a day at your local indie bookstore.
Just go out the door for a long walk. That’s how I found La Increíble, meandering down a tree-lined street circling Parque Mexico. The bookstore’s red, Marvel-like name made me think maybe this was a meeting place for superhero fans, but I walked in anyway — and so discovered a small, well-curated little trove of books. There was even an English section — shelves full of novels by Latin-American authors in translation.
Christina Rivera Garza, Mariana Enriquez, María Gainza. These were writers I’d never heard of, though they’d already won many prestigious international awards. Ah, how insulated my idea of the contemporary literary landscape has been — how impoverished! The bookseller in charge, Emanuel, also pointed me to a series of Argonautica books — each a contemporary work of Mexican literature with both the Spanish original and the English translation — perfect for Spanish language learners.
La Increíble gave me new decadent reads — and introduced me to decadent Naked Chocolates too, which offers a set of bars dedicated to a different stage of a relationship. I considered picking up Heartbroken, but in the end, thinking of you, reader, settled on Friendzone.
It was delicious. Happy reading —
Love,
Siel
New and Selected Stories by Christina Rivera Garza (Dorothy, 2022)
Say you’re a woman, and a writer. On an assignment you’re sent to a city in which only men live. Your job: To report on this city from a female perspective. Except not long after you arrive, you discover there were women who preceded you, women who also were sent to this city for the express purpose of reporting on it from a female perspective, but never did, because they disappeared.
This story, City of Men, is one of my favorites by Cristina — but many in this collection are similarly moody, mythical, vaguely sinister, and strange. Though she’s a MacArthur Genius Grant-winning, highly decorated Mexican author, I’d never heard of Cristina until I chanced by this book at La Increíble. The stories span 30 years of her publishing career and many on the latter end tend heavily toward the experimental, made up of short, poetic lines and quirky flarf-like fare. The farthest out of these, to be honest, I couldn’t get into. But I know the stories that grabbed me will haunt me for a long time.
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli (Knopf, 2019)
“I’m both too old and too young to pursue things that walk away from me,” says the protagonist of this novel, a woman on a road trip. She’s traveling with her husband, a man she’s on the verge of separating from, and their two kids, each the product of a former relationship.
During their trip they hear of children being detained at the border, read about lost children navigating deserts and trains, listen to The Lord of the Flies on audio. This novel is one that’s quiet on the outside but filled with an inner turbulence — a dying love, incompatible ambitions, needs for attention, fear of separation, despair — that parallels the turbulence of our political situation. Read it if you’ve ever loved — and wondered if maybe, possibly, despite the heartbreak, you might be happier freed of that love.
Aura by Carlos Fuentes (Originally published in Mexico City, 1962)
If you love the kind of ghost stories where you have no idea what the fuck is going on until the sudden twist at the very, very end, you might love this eerie, otherworldly novella. If, on the other hand, you’ve got more real-world goals — like learning Spanish — this very brief work by Carlos Fuentes might be up your alley too. Eke your way through its sixty-two quick pages, and you can declare, like I can now, that you’ve made it through an entire book in Spanish.
The protagonist of Aura is the kind of person who, when a really creepy job comes along, is financially desperate enough to say yes. That is to say, the protagonist is a struggling writer. He’s tasked with ghostwriting the autobiography of an old widow’s late husband — a job that, for some reason, comes with the prerequisite that he move into said widow’s dark and musty house. Full of bugs and mice and a strange little rabbit, the writer’s new home sounds like a hellhole — except the widow’s beautiful niece also lives in this cursed abode. The protagonist gets into his head that he’s somehow going to save this gorgeous girl — which is when things take an even darker turn —
Anyone who’s felt trapped in their living space during the pandemic might find comforting — or triggering — this claustrophobic novel. Bonus: The book contains some passages in French, should you like to brush up on a second romance language while you’re at it.
Once a month, I share book recommendations. Shape it by recommending a read!
Three links you might love:
The great fiction of AI. Already, genre writers are using AI to help them churn out books. “AI writing has entered an uncanny valley between ordinary tool and autonomous storytelling machine. This ambiguity is part of what makes the current moment both exciting and unsettling.”
The censorship of street food signs. “In the heart of Mexico’s capital, the colorful signs that have come to define the urban landscape of the city are being erased,” reports The New York Times.
Why you’re getting so many wrong-number texts. Max Read gets into “the great background hum of scammery, injustice, and abuse that makes up contemporary life.”