Elena Knows

Claudia Piñeiro • Frances Riddle (translator) • Charco Press • 148 pages

Apologies for the delayed review, but shipping delays got the best of me.

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• Themes: Parkinson’s, mystery, caregiving, mother-daughter relationship, abortion, Buenos Aires

• Read this if: You want to understand the difficulties of caregiving.

• Don’t read this if: You don't want to read about the effects of disability.

• Links to purchase: Charco Press, Amazon

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After Rita is found hanging in the belfry of the local church, everyone has accepted her death as a tragic suicide.  Everyone except for her mother, Elena. Elena tells the police that her daughter’s death could not have been a suicide because it was raining that day. Rita, her mother insists, would never go into a church when it was raining.  The police do not think the weather constitutes sufficient evidence for an investigation and so Elena sets out on what, for her, is an epic journey across Greater Buenos Aires.  Elena’s travel is made grueling by Parkinson’s disease, which renders every movement its own feat.  But her journey is an important one. With her failing health, she cannot probably investigate her daughter’s death, so she is on her way to call in a debt and get a body which can properly investigate her daughter’s death.

Elena Knows (Elena Sabe) is Claudia Piñeiro’s third novel.  Originally published in 2007, it is her fifth novel to get translated into English. Ms. Piñeiro is a well known author in the Spanish speaking world.  She holds the distinction as the most translated Argentinian author besides the mononymous literary giants, Borges and Cortázar.  She is well a known women’s rights activist in Argentina, and was involved in the fight to legalise abortion which went into effect in the beginning of 2021.  Abortion features prominently in the story of Elena Knows.  It is not the only element of the story drawn from Ms. Piñeiro’s life.  Her mother dealt with Parkinson’s towards the end of her life.  In an interview promoting Elena Knows,  she explains, “The sensation I had was that my mother stopped being seen when she began to suffer from [Parkinson’s]… people are often uncomfortable looking at someone when they have an illness that’s visible in the body—worse still if it’s visible in the face. So, in a way, Elena Knows was a way to put my mother’s sick body right in the foreground. Anyone who wants to read that book has to look at her. They have no other choice but to look at this person and see what is happening to her.”  And that is certainly a large part of the book. Describing the struggle not only the physical effects of the illness, but the degree to which it comes to control every aspect of life:

The trick is to lift up the right foot, just a few centimetres off the floor, move it forward through the air, just enough to get past the left foot, and when it gets as far as it can go, lower it. That’s all it is, Elena thinks. But she thinks this, and even though her brain orders the movement, her right foot doesn’t move. It does not lift up. It does not move forward through the air. It does not lower back down. It’s so simple. But it doesn’t do it. So Elena sits and waits. In her kitchen. She has to take the train into the city at ten o’clock; the one after that, the eleven o’clock, won’t do because she took the pill at nine, so she thinks, and she knows, that she has to take the ten o’clock train...

Elena Knows is a very well executed book. Having recently read a lot of first novels, it put the craftsmanship of this one in high relief.  The story is well constructed, the writing elegant and descriptive.  The messages are artfully delivered, with the author gently leading the reader to share her conclusions. That is a credit not only to the writing of the author, but as is always the case with stories originally published in another language, the translator, Frances Riddle.  I think anyone would benefit from reading this novel.  While it is sad, it is also an honest look at disability, its effect on the lives of the disabled as well as those around them, all packaged up as a crime mystery.