Working Woman

Elena and Susana are housemates living on the tawdry outskirts of Madrid during the economic crisis. While Susana advertises in the local paper, hoping to find someone to fulfill her bizarre sexual appetites, which involve menstruation and the full moon, Elena slowly watches her life unravel. Often at odds, yet united by their relationship to madness, the two women become unlikely friends as they attempt to avoid spiraling into complete mental breakdown. After the climax, a strange epilogue gives the book a metafictional twist: an author named "Elena" is interviewed about her latest book, trying to figure out where exactly to draw the line between novel and reality, writer and written. Author Elena Navarro, recognized as among the leading Latin American voices of her generation, here gives a compelling, engrossing, and wholly original novel for the 21st century.

A provocative new novel from the author ranked among Granta's "Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists"
Globally acclaimed as a relentless innovator and a meticulous explorer of the psyche's most obscure alleyways, Elvira Navarro here delivers an ambitious tale of feminine friendship, madness, a radically changing city, and the vulnerability that makes us divulge our most shameful secrets. It begins as Elisa transcribes the chaotic testimony of her roommate Susana, acting as part-therapist, part-confessor as Susana reveals the gripping account of her strange sexual urges and the one man who can satisfy them. But is Susana telling the truth? And what to make of the story that follows, where Elisa considers her own life failures, blending her literary ambitions with her deep need for catharsis? And then, one last surprise makes us question everything we have just read. Masterfully uncovering the insecurity that lurks just beneath the surface of every stable life, A Working Woman shows Elvira Navarro's strength for mordant storytelling and breathtaking insight into alienation, confirming her status as one of the leading voices of her generation.