‘A Little Luck’ by Claudia Piñeiro (Review)

After the Bolivian leg of our Women in Translation Month (#WITMonth) journey, involving six slightly dark day-trips, we’re staying in South America today, with a flight just across the border.  The next leg of our vicarious travels has us heading to Buenos Aires, where a woman is visiting a school in the capacity of an inspector, interviewing the staff to see if the education provided there is up to scratch.  However, even if she’s the one asking the questions, the visitor seems very nervy, and with good reason.  This isn’t her first time at the school, and she’s not sure she’s made the right decision in coming back…

*****
Claudia Piñeiro’s A Little Luck (translated by Frances Riddle, review copy courtesy of Charco Press) is narrated by American woman Mary Lohan, a representative of the Garlick Institute, a renowned organisation offering accreditation to schools all over the world that are able to meet its strict educational standards.  As she begins her long journey from Boston to Buenos Aires, she decides to narrate everything in what she calls a logbook, from her train ride to New York to her feelings on touching down in Argentina – her home country.

You see, Mary Lohan was once María Elena (or Marilé) Lauría, a native of the Argentine capital, but a tragic and traumatic event led to her fleeing the city twenty years back, and this is the first time she’s found herself able to return.  With the passing of time, and a few changes in appearance, it’s unlikely that she’ll be recognised, but she can’t shake the feeling that someone will see through her disguise – in particular, the one person she’s doing her best to avoid.

Piñeiro and Riddle are, of course, the team behind the superb Elena Knows, shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, and those who enjoyed the earlier work will be pleased to hear that this one is just as good, if not better.  I mentioned a certain Spanish writer in my earlier review, and again there’s something rather Maríasesque (Maríasian?) about Piñeiro’s work in places, the narrator almost talking to herself, with the reader aware that these seemingly idle pieces of reflection could contain crucial information, keys to the whole work:

It takes so many words to recount events that occur in a matter of minutes, seconds, fractions of time that are barely perceptible.  Things happen so quickly that the words needed to describe them are never able to keep up.  Just as it can take years for fleeting events to be forgotten.  Sometimes, those memories will never fade.  An instant can stay with us our entire lives, relived in words a thousand times over like a punishment.  Time is compressed and the narration of that time has to expand it to make it comprehensible.
p.37 (Charco Press, 2023)

A few sentences that (if we took away a full stop or two) could be straight out of the Your Face Tomorrow trilogy – and that we sense are pivotal to understanding where Piñeiro is going here.

Just as we think we know how this is all going to play out, with the writer keeping us in suspense until a late, clever reveal, Piñeiro switches gears again, leaving us blindsided.  You see, the big reveal actually comes at the end of the first section, around a third of the way through the book, with an encounter with the man she was avoiding.  A Little Luck is less a suspense novel keeping the reader hanging than an examination of the aftermath of a personal tragedy, and the possibility of ever bridging the gap back to where we were before it all happened.

I’m not going to spoil anyone’s reading experience by revealing what exactly the pivotal event entails, but it won’t take long to realise that it involves the short text that starts the book, describing cars waiting at a level crossing for a train to pass.  This text reappears several times, and whenever it does, details are added, expanding the story slightly and piquing our curiosity as to the full story.  Again, the way that final version lands in our laps is a surprise, both to us and to poor Mary/Marilé, a bombshell that leaves us and her to pick up the pieces.

Given the early reveal, Piñeiro needs to take the story in a different direction, and what ensues is an examination of trauma, and the choices we have in how we deal with it.  The narrator frequently replays the incident in her mind, explaining everything in detail to the reader of the text that makes up the second part of the novel:

You might be convinced that you know what you’d do in a certain situation, but you can’t truly know until you’re faced with it, until you’re in that situation for real.  Everything else is pure speculation. (p.115)

Having survived herself, Marilé must now decide whether to simply live with the consequences, accepting whatever people throw at her, or move on, removing herself from the scene in the hope that this will make life better for others.  Then, when the choice is made, it’s time to wonder, for years, whether it was the right one.

A little Luck is all wonderfully done, from the set-up and the long, slow confession of the writer’s ‘sins’, to the consequences of that belated confession.  The writing and pacing are superb, and, for this reader at least, there’s not a dull moment to be had, with the story coming to an end at just the right point.  The luck of the title, a concept the narrator mentions on several occasions, can go both ways, good and bad.  There’s the pivotal traumatic incident, of course, but there are also certain other occurrences, chance meetings that change the course of Marilé’s life.  She can’t help wondering how things might have turned out if these (un)fortunate events had played out differently…

I suspect you’ve come out of this review no wiser than when you arrived, but it’s difficult to really say more about A Little Luck without revealing certain aspects of the story that might affect your reading experience, and I’m rather loath to spoil it for you.  Rest assured that it’s another fantastic achievement by Piñeiro and Riddle, and I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to see the IBP judges agreeing with me come longlist time next year.  This is a book that will be everywhere soon, if it isn’t already, so hop on the bandwagon now while there’s still space – I guarantee it’s worth it 😉