Leni crossed her arms, said nothing, and watched the fight unfold.
She was like a bored onlooker at a boxing trial, wasting no energy
on the undercard, saving her passion for the moment when the real
champions would step into the ring. And yet, at some point, she
began to cry. Just tears, without any sound. Water falling from her
eyes as water was falling from the sky. Rain disappearing into
rain._The Wind That Lays Waste _begins in the great pause before a
storm. Reverend Pearson is an evangelist preaching the word of God
across northern Argentina with Leni, his teenage daughter, in tow.
When their car breaks down, fate leads them to the workshop of an
ageing mechanic, Gringo Brauer, and his assistant, a boy called
Tapioca. Over the course of a long day, curiosity and a sense of
new opportunities develop into an unexpected intimacy. Yet this
encounter between a man convinced of his righteousness and one
mired in cynicism and apathy will become a battle for the very
souls of the young pair: the quietly earnest and idealistic
mechanic's assistant, and the restless, sceptical preacher's
daughter. As tensions among the four ebb and flow, beliefs are
questioned and allegiances tested, until finally the growing storm
breaks over the plains.Selva Almada's exquisitely crafted debut,
with its limpid and confident prose, is profound and poetic, a
near-tangible experience of the landscape amid the hot winds,
wrecked cars, sweat-stained shirts and damaged lives, told with the
cinematic precision of a static road movie, like a _Paris, Texas
_of the south. With echoes of Carson McCullers, The Wind That Lays
Waste is a contemplative and powerfully distinctive novel that
marks the arrival in English of an author whose talent and poise
are undeniable.
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