All That Dies in April
In Mariana Travacio’s compact and lyrical novel All That Dies in April, a woman leaves the parched landscape of her village above the Argentinian pampas to search for the sea.
For fourteen years, Lina begged her husband Relicario to abandon their small house in the quebrada. She hates the craggy, inhospitable terrain, which offers “less and less each day.” The skies darken but rain never falls, almost as if the quebrada is “rejecting” the clouds and sending them “somewhere else.”
But Relicario refuses to leave the place where his ancestors are buried; he feels that Lina’s desire to relocate is foolish. Though he insists that he and Lina are “too old” for new ventures, Lina departs on her own, taking a few supplies and walking down slopes of “jagged rocks” with anxious determination. Weeks later, exasperated yet lonely, Relicario decides that he has no choice but to follow her. He digs up his parents’ graves, gathers their remains, and acquires a donkey and a wagon to help him travel. Carrying his ancestral past into the uncertain future, Relicario moves from the quebrada toward the sea.
Lina is a pragmatic yet mystical heroine who knows deep within her psyche that she will likely die if she cannot escape her barren environment. In pursuit of his wife, Relicario shows poignant devotion; he and his donkey Jumento make their way through rough terrain. After Lina finds domestic work on a ranch, the book’s eloquent yet spare tone broadens to include various other evocative characters and local intrigues. And within a tensile entwinement of fates, Lina’s yearning to live closer to water leads her to a climate of surging, often perilous rainfalls.
A visceral and emotional migratory quest propels the haunting novel All That Dies in April.
Reviewed by
Meg Nola
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