Lima: Planeta. 2022. 199 pages.
El dolor de la sangre, Venezuelan writer Kathy Serrano’s first novel, invites us to dive into a tumultuous sea. With the same skill demonstrated in her short stories, Serrano creates a universe in which she masterfully and movingly intertwines themes such as migration, solitude, violence, and family. In her novel, Serrano delivers a captivating story. Martha is a Venezuelan photographer who migrated to Lima a decade earlier and who is offered an opportunity that will change her life: she is invited to Venezuela to conduct a photo shoot. The protagonist accepts the assignment, which begins the reader’s process of submersion into rocky waters.
There are two clear time frames in the novel, which in turn make for distinct movements in the reading. The initial part can be read quickly and voraciously, when Martha is in Lima prior to her trip, because we want to know what happens and, also, because of the book’s rhythm: short chapters that generate intrigue and an insistent desire to quickly get to this other place the story promises. The second part, when Martha is in Caracas about to see her family, is like a Russian doll, since new scenes and motivations for the protagonist continue to emerge, showing us characters’ hidden sides. In light of this complexity, readers pause, wait, take a break. The narrative moves forward outlining a question that, little by little, we dare ask aloud: What does Martha really want? And the story grows here, in the space of desire.
Martha’s story is that of a woman whose desire and pain are linked to the experience of a family that crosses the line with her. Yet, she responds to such transgressions in ways that are versatile and unconventional in traditional narratives of femininity: violence brings her pain, certainly, but it also involves a desire that separates her from herself. In her first novel, Serrano makes a risky but noble wager when she gives up a simplistic view of violence and threads a story that has more to it: in El dolor de la sangre, we find the coexistence of suffering, due to cruel attacks, and enjoyment, which is repulsive and—fortunately—limited.
“SUCH A COMPLEX STORY REQUIRES NARRATIVES TECHNIQUES THAT CAN BRING IT TO LIFE. THUS THE CHAPTERS, WHICH TEND TO BE SHORT AND BLUNT LIKE FISTS, END UP KNOCKING THE READER OUT”
Martha dreams, thinks, and says what has been censured. The honesty we see in the author’s construction of the main character is something we also see in her portrayal of the protagonist’s family. When she returns to the dilapidated house she calls her home, we perceive something monstrous in Martha’s day-to-day life as a child and as an adult. She, too, recognizes herself in this monstrosity. The cover of the book gives us a clue on this point: a woman with her back exposed who is reflected in the shadow of a woman with snakes for hair, like a contemporary Medusa. Tracing the origin of this monstrosity necessarily means entering Martha’s family environment. Leaving aside Martha’s brother Rodrigo, whose atrocious mistakes are explicit, it’s interesting to see how other female characters are framed: Martha’s mother, sisters, and friends.
The author writes: “You only have one mother. The phrase hangs in the air. You only have one mother. But she, Martha, has searched for many mothers throughout her life.” Martha’s mother is blind to her daughter’s inner monster and to the reasons why Martha had to migrate. And Martha’s journey outside of Venezuela represents the path she took to break with her home dynamic: a family of women surrounding Rodrigo, a black hole who consumes everything. But the women in her family are also always judgmental of Martha’s differences: her independence, her voice, her body. Therefore, migration becomes a way to break with the atrocious and destructive forces of the maternal space; a mother who condemns Martha to solitude because she’s ignorant about Rodrigo and his criticisms of her. Martha’s migration is a symbolic, double process: it’s not simply a concrete action (leaving Venezuela), it also entails changing the core ideas she has about herself. In her life in Lima, her family is a bad dream that follows her. A blind mother and a daughter who constantly sees what has happened in her dreams.
As for the other female characters, Serrano’s novel offers a look into women’s relationships with one another, showing that women are key actors in other women’s lives, even more so than the men they are with. This view of a female network—not as a sisterhood, but rather from the perspective of the complexity of relationships—is one of the most valuable aspects of the novel. Women are the ones who protect, injure, love, silence, hide, and struggle. Women are also the ones who hasten the end of the story, even though it appears as though a battle between men is what changes Martha’s direction. In fact, it is Solimary, a childhood friend, and her mother who end up saving her. Apparently, Martha had to find women who do not have the same blood; blood that is so painful for Martha to bear.
Such a complex story requires narrative techniques that can bring it to life. Thus the chapters, which tend to be short and blunt like fists, end up knocking the reader out. Another interesting technique is the use of dreams as a space where themes can emerge that initially the protagonist won’t allow herself to explore. From the first chapters on, dreams reveal thanatotic and menacing subjects that are not symbolized in Martha’s consciousness until late in the novel. On this point, Sigmund Freud proposes that the mind is like an iceberg: its desires are hidden and only a very limited territory is visible (the tip of the iceberg). Freud also says that dreams are the best way to access the unconscious—that subjective place where fears, desires, impulses, and everything else that fiercely moves human beings accumulate. And this is exactly what happens with Martha’s dreams: they become a sign of what can be expressed in words when she is back in her maternal home.
El dolor de la sangre can be read as a novel about a double voyage: that of migration and the return to what has been repressed and is insistent until it emerges. It is also a book that strides with animal-like rhythm toward an unexpected destination: the discovery that fear and desire can be part of the same story.
