Fiction – paperback; Giramondo; 176 pages; 2019. Translated from the Spanish by Alice Whitmore.

Imminence, by Mariana Dimópulos, is the story of a first-time mother grappling with her lifelong emotional detachment, a challenge that intensifies when she brings her baby home.

It was originally published in 2014 in Argentina as Pendiente and translated from Spanish into English by Australian translator Alice Whitmore in 2019.

Earlier in the year, I read Dimópulos’ novella All My Goodbyes and was so impressed by this Argentinean writer that I knew I had to read something else by her.

The two stories bear similarities in the sense they focus on young women who are emotionally detached from the people around them, at odds with societal expectations, and often displaying behaviour that makes others uncomfortable.

The structure, composed of overlapping vignettes that shift between the present and the past and often loop back on one another, is also similar.

Maternal feelings

In Imminence, the unnamed 35-year-old narrator has spent the past month in hospital recovering from a serious infection following the birth of her first child, a son, Isaac.

When she returns home with the baby’s father, Ivan, a doctor and former Chechnyan soldier, it should be a joyous occasion. But our narrator feels nothing for her baby.

We’re together alone for the first time. I have to touch him. I try stroking a foot, then a shoulder. But no current lifts in me, nothing pulls at my chest the way they said it would. (page 1)

But this is not a case of post-natal depression: the narrator has struggled to make meaningful connections with others her entire life. This is best illustrated when she boxes up a pet cat given to her by Pedro, her lover at the time, and stabs the cardboard to “make air holes” — a chilling foreshadowing of how she later treats her own baby.

There is dark soil in the heart, fertile soil, where all kinds of thistles and flowers grow. (page 16)

Complex inner world

There’s not a huge amount of plot in Imminence. The story is essentially set across two pivotal evenings — the first fraught night at home after her extended hospital stay and the last night with Pedro — and focuses on the narrator’s inner world.

Ever since childhood […] I had experienced the opposite problem to most people: I found it hard not to tell the truth. The truth was like a cheap, colourful marble that I simply handed over. (page 98).

Interwoven with these moments are memories of key people from her past: Celeste, a relative she stayed with when she moved to Buenos Aires as a teen; Mara, an actress with whom she lived for a short time; and Ludmilla, who died before her time. And then there’s a previous lover, known as Cousin, who is sexually manipulative but has a kind of magnetic pull on her that she finds difficult to resist.

The story of how she met Ivan and how their relationship was almost over before it began (when they became stranded in the desert, she foolishly left him alone with a broken-down car while she headed off to get help) is also a key narrative thread.

A woman’s place

Interestingly, the narrator displays an expertise in mathematics and numbers, which suggests a form of (undiagnosed) neuro-diversity. This might also explain her inability to fit in and to understand others.

Similarly, she occasionally insists she is not a woman, but this is not about her sexual identity (as one friend jokingly asks, “Are you a hermaphrodite?”). Rather, it reflects her refusal to conform to traditional roles, such as her choice not to have children, which goes out the window when she meets Ivan, for whom she actually feels something.

This reflects the book’s central theme (beyond the narrator’s neurodivergent perspective), which is society’s expectations of women.

Those women, chewing on the tips of their spoons and biros in agony, were stuck between the right to have a child and the duty to have a child. They formed long queues at the clinics of psychoanalysts and pedicurists. (page 136)

Impressive writing

Despite the almost nihilistic behaviour she exhibits, there’s something about the narrator’s compelling voice and the tapestry of thoughts and memories she weaves that pulls the reader in. Dimópulos’ skill as a writer (and Whitmore’s excellent translation) also creates an irresistible sense of intimacy and unease.

I really like this kind of writing. It’s unconventional, thought-provoking and exciting. It pushes the boundaries in an accessible way because the author isn’t using literary flourishes to show off. Instead, she’s keeping her prose simple and silky smooth and she’s not spelling everything out.

I especially love her use of repeated motifs and callbacks — referencing earlier details, themes or phrases later in the story — to deepen meaning and add impetus.

For other takes on this novel, please see Lisa’s at ANZLitLovers and Joe’s at Rough Ghosts.

This review of ‘Imminence’ by Mariana Dimópulos was first published on Reading Matters. If you see this content on any other website, it has been reproduced without permission.