Book Review of Eating Ashes by Brenda Navarro (trans Megan McDowell)

 

Name of Book: Eating Ashes

Author: Brenda Navarro (trans Megan McDowell) 

ISBN: 9781324096085

Publisher: Liveright

Type of book: Grief, sibling bond, parentify, Mexico, Spain, migration for work, demeaning jobs, grandparents, suicide, dating, performative liberalism, lethargy 

Year it was published:  2022 (2026) 

Summary:

An arrestingly beautiful, award-winning novel about separation, migration, and love left behind.

Alone and adrift in Barcelona, an unnamed narrator is haunted by the death of her teenage brother, Diego. Diego, the little boy she helped raise in Mexico while their mother struggled to make a living in Spain. Diego, who loved Vampire Weekend and dreamed of becoming a pilot. Diego, who hated Madrid as much as she did.

Now, his ashes in hand, she must return to Mexico. Plagued by memories, she recounts their young lives leading up to tragedy in blistering detail: the acute loneliness that accompanied their emigration; the siblings’ first separation, when she left for Barcelona to make her own way in the world; her activism against labor abuses, which is threatened by her tumultuous relationship with an entitled lover; and the final, heavyhearted confrontation with her brother. Caught between rage and heartbreak over the loss of Diego, she pieces together a story of alienation, but also of surprising courage and hope.

Masterfully translated by National Book Award winner Megan McDowell, and shot through with flashes of dark humor, Eating Ashes boldly confronts both the intimate and systemic struggles faced by migrants striving to build a life worth living. Already an international sensation across Europe, this novel cements Brenda Navarro as a breathtakingly unique and vital voice in literature.

Characters:

Main characters are the Woman and Diego. (Woman is never named in the book.) Woman is a parentified girl who was forced to care for her younger brother when their mother moved to Spain to work, with little help from grandparents. Woman had to deal with feelings of being unwanted, not knowing about her father and of being seen in terms of Diego's caretaker instead of someone as human. From Woman's memories, Diego is a true teenager who also has to struggle with a lot of trauma, namely immigrating to a country that looks down on him, and leaving comfort and grandparents behind as well as being othered and not being understood by neither mom nor Woman. There are secondary characters such as Woman's Scottish boyfriend or a lot of "cousins" as well as the mother and grandparents and they are drawn well, but they aren't fully fleshed out, maybe because of the way Woman remembers them.

Theme:

How do you make sense of tragedy

Plot:

The story is in first person narrative from an unnamed woman's point of view who is mourning her younger brother Diego. The author then goes back to the past, detailing their lives in Mexico with their grandparents while their mother moved to Spain and worked there. Then the story moves on to when the woman and Diego moved to Spain and their lives there, the hidden life of Diego's as a teenager of Mexican descent in Spain, and of the struggles and lethargy that the Woman experienced in both dating and working life, culminating in the fatal visit of Diego for the weekend. There is a lot to unpack and explore within its pages, namely the effects of poverty on family, strain of migration on relationships, and of a parentified child on a sibling she is forced to care for. Aside from those aspects there is also performative liberalism that others do by tweeting and demonstrating but not much else in response. 

Author Information:
(From goodreads)

N/A

Opinion:

I had some struggles in trying to understand this novel. Not because its confusing, but I think mainly because of the subject matter, and of how memory worked for the main character. I guess I had trouble following her thoughts and memories because quite often the character would go back and forth between the past and present. Minus that, I found it to be a heartbreaking novel of migration, family and how choices can result in guilt, as well as the circular effects of tragedy and memory, which I found to be extremely brilliant. 

This was given for review

4 out of 5
(0: Stay away unless a masochist 1: Good for insomnia 2: Horrible but readable; 3: Readable and quickly forgettable, 4: Good, enjoyable 5: Buy it, keep it and never let it go.)