“I will never forget the experience of reading Clyo Mendoza’s work for the first time. Few writers can pack so much mystery, heart, and truth into a single sentence. Silencio is not just a book but a spell—one you want to fall under.”
—Daniel Saldaña Paris, author of Planes Flying Over a Monster
“This is a novel that eschews the ‘silence’ of its title to babble, and sing, and scream; a novel in which even the ancestors speak and saunter about among the living. “It begins with a woman in the throes of death, writhing on a dirt floor with only a ‘she-dog’ as witness. She is a young mother and a persecuted wife who drinks pesticide, and because she has taken her own life the local priest refuses to allow her body to be buried in the graveyard.
Silencio is loosely about the events that unspool from her death, as well as the grueling circumstances that foreshadowed it. The dead woman continues to talk, along with a cast of disparate voices—a chestnut-red horse, a black dog, a bird—in prose that is potent and poetic. Mexican writer Mendoza incorporates folk songs, excerpts from a military manual, and three indigenous languages, and yet in spite of the eclecticism of her novel, it is also a searing portrayal of a community brutalised by trafficking and corruption, where life is bleak and cheap.”—Sara Baume, Irish Times
“A pubescent girl bears witness to her late mother’s habitual rape by her narco father and finds guidance from her mother’s spirit in this arresting polyphonic work by Mendoza (Fury). The girl, Águeda, describes the unnamed mother’s anguish (“Why does she bury her face in the tears as though they were a tomb?”). The perspective then changes to the mother as she takes poison and dies. Soon after, Águeda’s father marries his mistress and silences the grieving Águeda’s protests. After Águeda falls in love with a local campesino boy, the father erupts with anger, having promised her to a fellow cartel member. More violence ensues, which Águeda survives thanks to guidance from her mother’s spirit. Mendoza blends the family’s story with grisly glimpses of failed Indigenous revolutions, as witnessed by birds, a war horse, and other animals, and she weaves in dialogue spoken in Indigenous languages including Tacuate, spoken by a group of children captivated by a horse (“¡Nde’ndiri!”/“We saw it!”). The lyrical animism is juxtaposed with matter-of-fact journalistic accounts of Mexican women experiencing exploitation and heartache in the U.S. It’s difficult to piece together, but Mendoza transcends the grim material in countless beautiful passages. Patient readers and lovers of poetry will delight in this demanding but dazzling project.”
—Publishers Weekly
