The story begins when Damaris
picks up a pup from a litter whose mother is found dead by the beach. She
decides to raise it and takes it to her shack, located on a bluff overlooking a
sea and which has a jungle nearby. Her fisherman husband and Damaris had moved
to the place on account of taking care of the estate which belonged to a couple
who lived faraway. It turns out that Damaris had lived there during her
childhood and has a tragic memory associated with the place, all the same she
still loves the place.
Damaris, who couldn’t have any
children despite trying many methods of healing along with her husband, doesn’t
like the way her husband treats the dogs they already have at their home. So,
in the early days of her adoption of a girl dog, she pampers1 it like a mother does to her child, is possessive about it and wants to raise it
without causing it any suffering. In fact, she names her with what she thought
for her unborn child. The trouble starts when one day the pup following other
dogs run away to the jungle and doesn’t return for more than a month only to
suddenly appear. She tries to restrain it from escaping but nothing helps and
it keeps escaping from the home for hours or days until the day when the dog comes
home pregnant. Already irked by the dog by now, who she thinks disregards her
attention and care after all the trouble she took for it, she wants to get rid
of it. However, things escalate to a dreadful episode when one day dog appears
again and destroys something that is sacred to her memory.
1. During
the daytime, Damaris carried the little dog around inside her brassiere,
between her big soft breasts, to keep her nice and warm. At night she put her
in the cardboard box Don Jaime had given her, with a hot-water bottle and the
T-shirt she’d worn that day, so the dog wouldn’t miss her smell.
Set in the Colombia’s Pacific
coast, The Bitch is a novel that holds the controlled and natural perfection in
the narration until the very end. The atmosphere and setting with coves, tides,
sea, rain and storm and the dense jungle is pitch-perfect that captures the
mood and tension of the story. The story is about motherhood and love but also
about guilt and shame. The characters are so raw and genuine, without any
embellishment, though the story revolves around Damaris and her dog, they add
to the internal trouble and change in Damaris’s emotional realm, and everything
that characterizes her motherly nature, her bitter-sweet memories and the guilt
of not having any children.
The story built around a canine
character is so intense, we identify with the psychological tension building up
in Damaris. And, every sentence hits the bull’s-eye; not an extra word is
written. The forte of description is equally brilliant like the plots that make
The Bitch a powerful story that takes
not so many pages. Here, the coastal life comes alive and also the symbols of
decay that overshadow the harshness. This work makes us realize how strong and
feeble at the same time are human thoughts, emotions, relations, expectations
and persona.
Author: Pilar
Quintana
Translator: Lisa
Dillman
Publisher: WorldEditions
Author's
Photo Credit: https://www.worldeditions.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/AP_Quintana_c_DaniloCosta.jpg
Review Copy
Courtesy: World Editions
