Mexican fictionA transfixing tale of motherhood and friendshipGuadalupe Nettel’s new novel evokes the value of kindness and the unpredictability of lifeStill Born. By Guadalupe Nettel. Translated by Rosalind Harvey. Fitzcarraldo Editions; 200 pages; £12.99The narrator of Guadalupe Nettel’s transfixing fourth novel makes what she calls “the best decision of her life”: she resolves to get her tubes tied. In the past Laura, now a 30-something graduate student, had been tempted by the idea of pregnancy, “just as someone who without ever having contemplated suicide, allows themselves to be seduced by the abyss from the top of a skyscraper”. After the surgery, she describes the procedure to her friend Alina as “the perfect precaution”, an inoculation against the pressures that society heaps on women.Like Elena Ferrante’s tale of maternal ambivalence, “The Lost Daughter”, and Rachel Cusk’s unblinking memoir, “A Life’s Work”, “Still Born” evokes
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