One doesn't often encounter novels that fuse Argentinian poetry, detailed literary analysis, and a castrating serial killer, but that's the combination on offer in Death Takes Me, Pulitzer Prize winner Cristina Rivera Garza's (The Iliac Crest; New and Selected Stories) entertainingly wince-inducing concoction, translated from the Spanish by Sarah Booker and Robin Myers.
In the novel, Cristina Rivera Garza, also a Mexican professor of literature, goes out for a run one night and makes a terrifying discovery: a dead man whose testicles have been lopped off. Soon, three more men are castrated. A female investigator known only as "the Detective" contacts Garza to take her statement and to draw upon her literary expertise. Found next to each victim are lines from the poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik, a real-life Argentine poet who died in 1972. The Detective hopes Garza's knowledge will help her find the killer.
As in any good thriller, complications ensue. First, "the Tabloid Journalist," who says she wants to write a book about the murders, shows up. Then, cryptic notes in Pizarnik's voice appear under Garza's door. Soon, more messages appear, all of them by a young woman who ominously warns Garza to stop talking to the Detective. In 97 short chapters, Garza combines her clipped writing style--"A collection of impossible angles. A skin, the skin. Something on the asphalt. Knee. Shoulder. Nose. Something broken. Something dislocated"--with original poems, critical appraisal of Pizarnik's work, and truly chilling moments. What could have been a tawdry potboiler is instead an intelligent, intricate examination of human nature. It's challenging, but great fun. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer