“Fluently translated from the Spanish, this absorbing novel with a Holdenesque narrator delivers a raw and arresting new voice in literature.”
—BOOKLIST (starred review)
“Dazed with grief, a young woman pours her heart out to a beloved friend who committed suicide, in a stream of consciousness that scatters the page with the ashes of home, popular songs, horrific news items, movie plots, pets, vermin, and exes. In this pitch-perfect performance of a chilly autumn homecoming in Patagonia, Jennifer Croft conjures a millennial voice that is raw and utterly real.”
—ESTHER ALLEN, translator of Zama
“August is enviable in its unpretentiousness, feminism, and intelligence. I texted photos of almost every page to my friends. I wanted to live inside of August, and am now Romina Paula’s biggest fan.”
—CHLOE CALDWELL, author of I’ll Tell You in Person
“In Romina Paula’s August, the narrator addresses us as ‘you,’ the missing person, in an urgent, generous, often funny voice rife with confidences, reminiscent of an adolescent sharing important, whispered truths for the first time. This novel breathes with feverish life.”
—MAXINE SWANN, author of Flower Children
“This hyperlocal and/yet global tale of the lonely pressures of womanhood and loyalty bristles against sentimentality while insisting how much we must turn to language to realize emotion. August’s confessions are rinsed in the waters of the intellect and give a large purchase on readers’ imaginations: a book of deft fury and defter beauty.”
—JOAN NAVIYUK KANE, author of Milk Black Carbon
Published in 2017 by the Feminist Press
at the City University of New York
The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406
New York, NY 10016
First Feminist Press edition 2017
Copyright © 2009 by Romina Paula
Translation copyright © 2017 by Jennifer Croft
Originally published in Spanish as Agosto by Editorial Entropía in 2009.
All rights reserved.
This book was made possible thanks to a grant from New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
This book is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First printing April 2017
Cover and text design by Suki Boynton
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Paula, Romina, 1979- author. | Croft, Jennifer (Translator), translator.
Title: August / Romina Paula; translated by Jennifer Croft.
Other titles: Augusto. English
Description: New York: The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016046248 (print) | LCCN 2017005001 (ebook) | ISBN 9781558614277 (ebook all)
Subjects: LCSH: Voyages and travels--Fiction. | Female friendship--Fiction. BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Coming of Age. | GSAFD: Bildungsromans.
Classification: LCC PQ7798.426.A89 A913 2017 (print) | LCC PQ7798.426. A89 (ebook) | DDC 863/.7--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016046248
The girl returns with a rodent’s face, disfigured by not wanting anything to do with being young.
—HÉCTOR VIEL TEMPERLEY,
Hospital Británico
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
ABOUT THE AUTHOR & TRANSLATOR
ALSO BY FEMINIST PRESS
ABOUT FEMINIST PRESS
It was something about wanting to scatter your ashes; something about wanting to scatter you.