Such Small Hands
Andres Barba
[Transit Books]
“Her father died instantly, her mother in the hospital.” So opens Andres Barba’s Such Small Hands, drawing the reader in with a refrain that is erected over and again like stubborn ruins, reminding us of the young Marina’s utter isolation and preparing us for the blunt violence to come. The refrain’s subtlety makes it all the more powerful: the reader slips, unawares, into Barba’s psychic landscape, complete with its own language, its own architecture. Newly orphaned as the result of a car crash, seven year old Marina is bandaged up in a hospital, then sent to an all-girls orphanage. But first she is gifted (or cursed with) a doll, which she also names Marina.
A headlong rush to hell from there – the girls in the orphanage see Marina’s scar and are confronted with frightening ideas of individuality, “a discovery you could do nothing with, a discovery that served no purpose.” Identity gets warped as nightly games at playing dolls become nightmarish: “The doll would await her face.” The book’s small size, like its inhabitants, is in no way indicative of its immense power. The voices of little girls, frightened and naive, are rendered eerie and hypnotic in a language that seems just as capable of bursting into giggles as it does a fit of menacing hisses.
Words: John Vaughan
