Publishers Weekly
03/27/2023
Argentine writer Venturini makes her posthumous English-language debut with a sordid and morbidly funny tale of sexual violence, first published in 2007 when she was 85. Yuna is a gifted art student in La Plata, Argentina, who supports her disabled younger sister, Betina, and their single mother. Under the auspices of her professor José, Yuna becomes a rising star. But despite her reputation and success as an artist, she struggles to protect Betina and their cousins Carina and Petra from sexual predators, including a neighbor and another character whose misdeeds are a surprise. Yuna narrates her family’s tragedies in spiraling and sometimes spectacular run-on sentences, professing that punctuation tires her out. Through keen and quirky observations, she finds humor in the darkness, “The end of everything is dessert. I once thought when looking at a dead gentleman in a coffin enveloped by the big embroidered napkin, or whatever it is, that he looked like a dessert being served up to someone.” Cousin Petra, a sex worker, teaches Yuna that while the men in their orbit commit rape as naturally as breathing, there is always room for revenge while the wronged yet live. Short, sharp, and startling, this will surely have readers eager to see more of Venturini’s special derangement. Agent: Sandra Pareja, Massie & McQuilkin Literary. (May)
From the Publisher
NPR, A Best Book of the Year
"At turns morbid and darkly funny, Venturini’s late masterpiece follows several women in La Plata, Argentina, in this story of misogyny, disability and art.” —The New York Times Book Review
"Fearless, shocking, and utterly engrossing . . . Through art, [Cousins] offers its characters the same startling freedom that Venturini offers herself." —Lily Meyer, NPR
"A portrait of the artist as a young woman, by way of David Lynch . . . It's a joy welcoming the outlandish Cousins to the stellar family of 21st-century Argentine authors available in English." —Cory Oldweiler, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
"A dark, gnomic, slapstick series of tales about a poor family living near Buenos Aires whose catalogue of terrible misfortunes and tribulations are relayed here in matter-of-fact, wholly original style . . . Cousins is on a par with the surrealist fiction of Leonora Carrington." —Catherine Taylor, The Irish Times
"Kit Maude’s translation nails this breathless voice . . . Venturini knows just how long she can afford to pursue a digression or a run-on sentence, how to bring in a sense of character expressively . . . On finishing, I had the sense that I’d just experienced something with the energy of a baroque classic." —Jonathan McAloon, Financial Times
"Extraordinary . . . Readers will find [Yuna's] unique voice—brought to life by the inimitable, ageless Venturini—unforgettable." —Elaine Elinson, Ms.
"Breezy and brutal . . . [Cousins] takes her favoured theme of dysfunctional families (Venturini studied child psychology) and magnifies it . . . confided in a wandering singsong nicely caught by Kit Maude’s translation." —Lorna Scott Fox, The Times Literary Supplement
"Extraordinary . . . Darkly funny, grotesque, often disturbing . . . A brilliant coming-of-age story that turned its eighty-five-year-old author into a literary star in her native Argentina." —Jude Burke-Lewis, Southwest Review
"A work in which art allows for both liberation and revelation." —Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders
“Cousins is a startling document: a beautifully depraved kunstlerroman about an impoverished young girl boosted suddenly and unexpectedly into artistic fame. In turns cruel, crazed, and astoundingly lyrical, it’s a book readers of Fleur Jaeggy or Violette Leduc will love and be horrified by in equal measure.” —Kyle Francis Williams, Full Stop
"The English-language debut of the Argentine powerhouse is fast, fun, and dark. It follows a family that is down on their luck just outside of Buenos Aires. As down and out as it can feel at times, Venturini brings the slapstick as fast and often as she can." —Adam Vitcavage, Debutiful
"A brutal, visceral, and vivid story told in an unforgettable voice." —Kirkus Reviews (starred)
"Sordid and morbidly funny . . . Short, sharp, and startling, this will surely have readers eager to see more of Venturini’s special derangement." —Publishers Weekly
“Women are the fiery nucleus of Cousins, a hellishly tender and hilariously twisted Little Women. Venturini seems to caress the monstrosity of her invention like a dearly freakish pet, and that intimacy shines through the darkness of her writing, so full of candor and brilliance, like a creature of obsidian light.” —Pola Oloixarac, author of Mona
"Brimming with life, humor, and a vital twist of darkness, Venturini's English-language debut marks the arrival of a singular voice with a sharp, visceral approach to story. Reading Cousins is like being inside the belly of a wild, rambunctious beast, going where it goes, exhilarated no matter how perilous the journey." —Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun
"Cruel and strange and colorful—Cousins will be an immediate favorite for fans of Fleur Jaeggy and Leonora Carrington." —Catherine Lacey, author of Biography of X and Pew
“Cousins is a novel that makes you laugh out loud with its provocations and unexpected choices. Bodies are pushed to the limit in writing that gushes forth like blood. With Cousins Aurora Venturini achieved the acclaim she’d been seeking all her life and enjoyed it in characteristic fashion: baring the scars of the monstrous persona she cultivated with ironic lucidity.” —Mariana Enríquez, author of Things We Lost in the Fire
“When I first read Venturini, it was a genuine discovery, the kind that Pascal describes in Memorial. Reading, real reading, is the Stendhal syndrome, it’s like being bombarded, and that’s what Aurora Venturini is . . . Venturini’s characters fit Kafka’s premise that ‘Writing . . . is to leap out of the ranks of murderers.’” —Ariana Harwicz, author of Tender
“Cousins is a unique, extreme novel of disarming originality.” —Alan Pauls, author of A History of Money
“One has no choice but to succumb to Yuna Riglos’ corrosive charm.” —Camila Sosa Villada, author of Bad Girls
“Monstrous but brilliant with hair-raising humor: to read Aurora Venturini is to be presented with a sometimes unnerving degree of originality. The narrator’s voice veers between raw intelligence and dumb ingenuity, and therein lies the genius of its style.” —Clarín
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2023-02-24
What to do when the grotesque is the norm in your family, your surroundings, your life? Make art out of it.
An enigmatic young Argentinian woman with a quirky command of language, Yuna Riglos narrates Venturini’s bizarre and mordant tale of misogyny and misunderstanding. She and her sister, Betina, are being raised by a strict schoolteacher mother whose husband left the household years earlier. Yuna and Betina are both considered disabled, although Yuna’s difficulties are more subtle and fluid than her sister’s multiple physical and emotional disabilities (some of which lead to unfortunate physical manifestations). Yuna’s aunt—her mother’s sister, Nené—has two girls as well, one of whom was born with a type of dwarfism. Yuna’s challenges (beyond those presented by her distressing environment) involve a lack of facility with language; for example, punctuation exhausts her, and she consults a dictionary constantly (with sometimes-comedic results) in order to record her thoughts on the events of her life. The only factor in Yuna’s favor is her extraordinary talent as a painter, which allows her to convey the brutal realities of life around her and also rid herself of the “mess” in her head. Yuna and her cousins suffer a variety of assaults, crimes, and indignities at the hands and genitals of the men in their orbit, with varying degrees of damage done. Yuna’s instinctive and underinformed efforts to create a more tolerable life for herself result in what may be considered growth but might not be considered success. Venturini was 85 years old and had produced more than 40 novels by the time she won an Argentinian literary prize for this work in 2007. It’s now been translated from Spanish to English, for the first time, by Maude.
A brutal, visceral, and vivid story told in an unforgettable voice.
