We, the Casertas
Aurora Venturini & Kit Maude
Book Description
From prize–winning author Aurora Venturini, a Gothic masterpiece following a gifted Argentine girl who left for Europe in search of meaning, and the relentless punishments of womanhood in the 1940s
In deliciously ironic, and at times breathtakingly poetic prose, We, the Casertas is the story of Chela, the first-born child to a wealthy family in Buenos Aires. Threatened by her extraordinary intellect, her parents immediately take against her, instead lavishing attention on her beautiful sister. Chela is soon exiled to the attic and allowed to run wild, her only friend a lame owl with whom she explores the countryside.
Chela’s intellectual curiosity grows and she becomes a brilliant student, excelling at subject after subject, and eventually breaking free of the family that has always misunderstood her. But her troubles don’t end there. After falling in love with a married man more than twice her age, she has her heart broken when he refuses to divorce his wife. In her hurt, she flees to Chile where she befriends Pablo Neruda, before heading to Europe where she falls in with a trio of mysterious aristocratic intellectuals dabbling in black magic. After her estate is appropriated by the Peronist government, Chela goes in search of her great aunt in Sicily where she embarks upon a passionate affair, goes treasure hunting with local sailors, and discovers an old family relic.
We, the Casertas is a wild, unpredictable novel about the horrors of family life and the desperate loneliness of womanhood in the mid-century.
AURORA VENTURINI was born in 1921 in La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina. She worked as a psychologist and Rorschach test specialist at the Institute of the Child’s Psychology and Re-education, where she befriended Eva Perón. In 1948, Jorge Luis Borges awarded her the Premio Iniciación for her book El Solitario. Persecuted for her political ideas, she had to go into exile in Paris, where she interacted with personalities of French existentialism and Violette Leduc in particular. She wrote more than thirty books. In 2007, she received the Página/12 New Novel Award for Cousins. She died in 2015, in Buenos Aires, at the age of ninety-four.
Praise For This Book
Write or Die, A Must-Read Book of the Month“Translator Kit Maude has succeeded again in delivering a darkly brilliant, compellingly wry voice . . . a wondrous exploration of the narrator's mind. The dark playfulness of the young woman, Chela Stradolini, narrating this bildungsroman will remind readers of Scout or possibly Mick from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Change the names and a few locations and the novels of Venturini would be at home in a course on the Southern Gothic, but, unlike its American counterpart, the South American Gothic has greater territorial ambitions, with characters unafraid to cross borders.” —Will Chancellor, The Brooklyn Rail
“First published in 1992 and only now translated into English, Venturini’s novel remains relevant through its focus on power struggles and the will of the individual, plus its intriguing look into the occult . . . A good pick for readers of fantabulism and literary historical fiction.” —Library Journal
"Mesmerizing . . . Full of unexpected turns and darkly haunting imagery, this gothic tale is worthy of its resurrection." —Publishers Weekly
