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Karen E. Bender
“She had been out of work for seventeen months (...) She thought she had learned to calibrate her hope, that wild, muscular dog inside her — she learned to press it down. She thought sometimes that the dog might leap out of her, leave her empty, a husk.” |
Karen Bender, por su parte, ha publicado dos novelas y dos libros de cuentos: Like Normal People, A Town of Empty Rooms, Refund (finalista del National Book Award) y The New Order.
En los libros de Karen E. Bender no hay espacio para lo fantástico pero sí un ojo experto para diseccionar miedos y relaciones humanas. De ella también me gustan particularmente sus libros de cuentos: Refund y The New Order.
En Refund, todos los cuentos giran alrededor del dinero: historias plagadas de deudas, estafas, créditos que se pagan apenas, tensiones producto de la precariedad inminente que contamina también a los afectos. Todo escrito con una prosa bellísima y afilada a la vez.
En The New Order, su libro más reciente, hay una exploración brutal en el miedo que se esconde en rutinas, como en el proceso de examinar una sinagoga para armar protocolos en caso de atentado o el vigilar a los apoderados de un colegio para ver quién votó por Trump.
Algunas citas:
“He could see now that she was enormously tired, that she had spent her life keeping herself awake far longer than she should have.”
O también: “He walked through the hotel, past the slot machines , where the sounds of people hoping to change their lives were as loud as a thousand bees”
Otra más: “She glanced at her husband; their love had been, like all love at the beginning, a mutual and essential misunderstanding.”
Y luego: “They could not afford to have a heart attack, to lose their minds.”
“Our footsteps made almost no sound as we walked across the sanctuary. I was aware of all the doors — two in the back, the side exit. Unease was spreading inside me, a dark, fluttery lake. I imagined how many steps a shooter would take, running in...”
“She had been out of work for seventeen months (...) She thought she had learned to calibrate her hope, that wild, muscular dog inside her — she learned to press it down. She thought sometimes that the dog might leap out of her, leave her empty, a husk.”
©️ Foto encontrada en: https://www.counterpointpress.com/authors/karen-e-bender/
Karen Bender, "Refund":