National Book Award Nominee for Translated Literature 2019. Image by Andrea Morales.
SPACE INVADERS by Nona Fernández, at about one hundred pages, is a slim little book translated from its original Spanish. Where it seems to lack in pages, the novella dispels underestimations with its packing of emotions and tension during the violent Pinochet regime. Augusto Pinochet came into power after the coup in 1973, backed by the United States government, which overthrew the elected socialist, Salvador Allende, the military dictatorship lasting until 1990. Pinochet was responsible for kidnappings and executions of people who posed any inconvenience or resistance to his rule, numbering in the thousands. Torturings were at numbers even higher than that, more than three times as much. It was a violent and precarious time in Chile. What does this look like to a child?
Told from the perspectives of a group of kids, we read about their dreams and musings. They are kids being kids; some with crushes on each other, some enjoy playing video games. Eventually, things get odd ─ particularly with Estrella, whose father is a government officer who has a wooden prosthetic hand he removes when he gets home from work. He would drive his daughter to school in the mornings, but soon stops doing so and it becomes the task of her "Uncle," a man who works with Estrella’s father. Each friend remembers something different about her: her letters, her hair, her kisses. SPACE INVADERS is difficult to read this with any childlike innocence because you know something is fundamentally wrong, even if you don’t know what that something is. There is confusion, and with confusion there is fear. The lack of concrete answers makes this fear all the more palpable, as does the inability to openly talk about it. Some of the kids' families are political activists, upending their relationships. Because we revisit this time through memory, with emotion filling us in, it may seem as if we cannot rely on these children. I think the opposite is truer: the feelings that permeated this time are a testament to the dictatorship's tormenting violence.
Fernández writes SPACE INVADERS in fragments, invoking uncertainty and disjointedness. Memories that dissolve into dreams further question reality, and it's quite masterfully done in such little space. And that, too ─ the title, the name of the video game the kids play by shooting guns, makes me think of the way brutality occupies space, whether physical or temporal. Nominated for the National Book Award for Translated Literature 2019, this novella from Graywolf Press is a must-read.
Andrea Morales is a daughter of Guatemalan immigrants and from Los Angeles. She graduated from the University of Southern California with a B.A. in English Literature and a minor in Psychology. She now works at Macmillan Publishers as a Junior Contracts Associate for the adult trade division. Her book reviews and recommendations can be found on Instagram at @nastymuchachitareads and she lurks on Twitter as @nastymuchachita.
