Paula Pérez Alonso Argentina

© Alejandra Lopez

Paula Pérez Alonso was born in Buenos Aires in 1958. She studied journalism and literature in Buenos Aires and London, and worked in radio and television and for various print media. Pérez Alonso is now an editor for a large Buenos Aires publisher.

Her first novel No sé si casarme o comprarme un perro ("Don't know if I should get married or buy myself a dog") was a great success with readers and critics.

In her latest novel, the bestselling Argentinean author Paula Pérez Alonso once again proves herself a sensitive and incorruptible observer of society. Frágil ("Fragile") is set in present-day Buenos Aires, where the two protagonists meet in the city's lively centre. When he discovers Celeste at the crossroads of Corrientes and Diagonal, Bruno is immediately fascinated: a girl on stilts dressed in neon colours handing out flyers from the Centro de la Liberación to passers-by. He follows her and they start talking. As they get to know each other better, Celeste manages to confront Bruno with his memories and his life story, which he had successfully repressed. The young man earns a living as a computer specialist, spending his free time walking the exact same paths through the city every night. He lives the life of a loner without any contact to his parents and grandmother, who tortured him psychologically as a child and broke his will. Celeste tears Bruno out of his apparently ordered and normal life, and he senses that she can help him.

Celeste too senses that she touches something in Bruno. She wants to convince him that it's good to lose control over oneself every now and then. She suggests sex, but on their third real date he takes Celeste along on one of his night tours instead, and the two of them watch people through their lighted windows: people who are alone, people who have nothing to say to each other and all watch the same TV shows. Celeste recognises one of these individuals: a man who begs in the town centre and obviously manages to maintain a meagre sense of dignity. By chance, she and Bruno meet him later in a restaurant and get into conversation. A few days later, Celeste reads in the newspaper that the man has been murdered – and Bruno has vanished...

In Fragil, Paula Pérez Alonso steers two unusual and fundamentally diffe-rent personalities up against each other, prompting dramatic consequences. The book is a startling revelation of the fractures and identity problems of today's Argentinean society.

Original editions and rights sold:

Novels:

No sé si casarme o comprarme un perro

60.000 copies sold in Latin America and Spain!

Buenos Aires: Tusquets 1995, 286 p.

El agua en el agua

Buenos Aires: Seix Barral 2001, 255 p.

Frágil

Buenos Aires: Seix Barral 2008, 230 p.

Stories:

Hecho un taller

Buenos Aires: Argos 1983