Space Invaders - Supernormal Reads

Paperback, 96 pages

Published by Graywolf Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-64445-007-9
OCLC Number:: 1080276291

(1 review)

A dreamlike evocation of a generation that grew up in the shadow of a dictatorship in 1980s Chile

Space Invaders is the story of a group of childhood friends who, in adulthood, are preoccupied by uneasy memories and visions of their classmate Estrella González Jepsen. In their dreams, they catch glimpses of Estrella’s braids, hear echoes of her voice, and read old letters that eventually, mysteriously, stopped arriving. They recall regimented school assemblies, nationalistic class performances, and a trip to the beach. Soon it becomes clear that Estrella’s father was a ranking government officer implicated in the violent crimes of the Pinochet regime, and the question of what became of her after she left school haunts her erstwhile friends. Growing up, these friends―from her pen pal, Maldonado, to her crush, Zúñiga―were old enough to sense the danger and tension that surrounded them, but were powerless in the face of it. …

A dreamlike evocation of a generation that grew up in the shadow of a dictatorship in 1980s Chile

Space Invaders is the story of a group of childhood friends who, in adulthood, are preoccupied by uneasy memories and visions of their classmate Estrella González Jepsen. In their dreams, they catch glimpses of Estrella’s braids, hear echoes of her voice, and read old letters that eventually, mysteriously, stopped arriving. They recall regimented school assemblies, nationalistic class performances, and a trip to the beach. Soon it becomes clear that Estrella’s father was a ranking government officer implicated in the violent crimes of the Pinochet regime, and the question of what became of her after she left school haunts her erstwhile friends. Growing up, these friends―from her pen pal, Maldonado, to her crush, Zúñiga―were old enough to sense the danger and tension that surrounded them, but were powerless in the face of it. They could control only the stories they told one another and the “ghostly green bullets” they fired in the video game they played obsessively.

One of the leading Latin American writers of her generation, Nona Fernández effortlessly builds a choral and constantly shifting image of young life in the waning years of the dictatorship. In her short but intricately layered novel, she summons the collective memory of a generation, rescuing felt truth from the oblivion of official history.

3 editions

ralentina reviewed Space Invaders by Nona Fernández

…there’s no way to agree, because in dreams, as in memory, there is no agreement, nor should there be.

4 stars

A choral novella - a group of children from Santiago remembering, or maybe dreaming, the early 1980s. The narration is disjointed, I think to evoke the haziness and logic of dreams: friendships, crushes, school ceremonies, games of touching and kissing each other, patriotic school plays, forays into politics. People are being disappeared, tortured, killed - and the victims as the oppressors are all around, parents, colleagues, brothers. Bordering on the too obscure, but being so short it works, and it is evocative, the thrills of growing up, the horror of the dictatorship, folded into one.