A hot liquid spills from inside the ear.
“That can say many things,
none of them good
, none of them healthy,” says Paulina, a
woman
who wakes up in an
overturned car
in the middle of the night.
There is smoke, the smell of gasoline, echoes of voices on a radio.
In the car heading towards the south coast are Maite, her office colleague, and Gallardo, her dog.
Paulina's jaw trembles, she is cold.
Camila Fabbri.
An extreme situation, that of an accident, occupies the first pages of
The Queen of the Dance
(Anagrama), a novel with which
Camila Fabbri
was a finalist for the
Herralde Prize
.
Then it is time to return to the past, where she enters her relationship with Felipe, her partner, and an inexorable path towards separation.
Lucidity
mixed with certain touches of
disenchantment
, a novel as short as it is simple, of that simplicity that is read virtuously, evading all pretension, all bombast
.
Paulina seems to observe everything minutely, in the seemingly smallest details of everyday life, and she does not hide her frailties and the fluctuation of her emotions.
There, in those interstices, this novel
reveals a certain midlife crisis
in a cocktail in which there is no shortage of desire and doubts about motherhood, medical practices, love and loneliness, friendship and the inevitable company of animals and a life that is put together - and put back together - after separation.
Camila Fabbri was born in Buenos Aires in 1989 and graduated in
Dramaturgy
from the Municipal School of Dramatic Arts.
The Prom Queen
is her first completely fictional novel and it came after the premiere at the San Sebastián International Film Festival of her first film
Clara Gets Lost in the Woods
.
Writer and director,
she directed five plays
and as a journalist she collaborates in various cultural and literary media.
In 2015 she published
Los Accidents
, her first book of stories, republished in 2017 in Spain and Latin America.
The Day They Turned Out the Light
(2021), inspired by the
Cro-Mañón tragedy
, was her first “non-fiction” novel, and
We Are Safe
(2022), her second book of stories.
In 2021 she was selected by
Granta
as one of the 25 best narrators in Spanish under 35 years of age.
As an actress, she worked in
Two Shots
, by Martín Rejtman;
and in
Las Vegas
, by Juan Villegas.
–It seems that there is a narrative taste for accidents in your work. What attracts you to that?
–I don't know if there is something that particularly attracts me, in this case I started from that image because it was a great metaphor for how one feels when a relationship that meant a lot ends.
It doesn't necessarily end up shocking, but it is an
analogy
that attracts me, as happened in my play
My First Hiroshima
.
Something about the pain, the blow, the heartbreak, the disagreement, the lack of trust.
Those things that arise not only from the
bond of a couple
but from
friendship relationships
.
And regarding that, delve not into the most recognizable places of heartbreak, such as crying and handkerchiefs, but into more immense catastrophes.
Finding a certain meaning there, almost like a game.
I am challenged by three-dimensional characters, which are what give a certain essence to my stories.
Camila FabbriWriter
–The physical sensation of the accident is at the beginning as something that later moves to other plots. Was that adrenaline the first thing that came up in writing?
–Yes, like a shake.
The novel begins where it begins to read, the woman who wakes up in an accident and she is the one driving.
Then the other characters appeared and that turned it into a novel, but at first it was something much shorter.
I like to come up with bonding stories, with
well-defined characters
, both in their physical appearance and in their contradictions, both in their ways of expressing themselves and in everything they think when they are not speaking.
I link that to my work as a playwright, which was the most specific training I had.
I am challenged by three-dimensional characters
, so to speak, who are what give a certain essence to my stories.
Camila Fabbri with other writers: from left to right, Gabriela Larralde, Alejandra Zina, Fabbri and Mariana Enriquez.
/Julio Juarez
–In
The Dancing Queen,
female characters appear centrally.
What questions did you have when approaching your relationships?
–With my characters I like to escape from cliché, which is what the collective unconscious takes as commonplaces, especially those that are anchored to a certain age.
There is a cliché with women in their thirties, forties
, who apparently want to be mothers and who are looking for it and are not in a relationship or do not want to be.
Then the things they do to get there appear, the failed dates or being spectators of their friends' motherhood.
In all of this there are many clichés, like it is digested from a comical perspective.
I don't see anything funny about someone who can't fulfill his desire
for her, so I like to escape the idea that they are two friends who spend time together and then sisterhood is taken for granted.
Well, just because they support each other on many issues does not mean that they always support each other, because differences arise.
There is a very wild place in the bond of women where there are grays, not everything is so good or so bad.
Those feelings that at times appear brighter and at others less, are the ones that interest me, which is not conclusive with whether a woman is more or less sorora.
–In addition to your novels, stories and plays, today your journalistic notes are read with strong intervention in the public space. Is it another way to express yourself as a writer?
–If there is a space to write and to express my thoughts, that is where I feel most comfortable, to awaken some sensitivity with something that I can give my opinion or argue.
I like to trace ideas that include other eras, that cross artists.
I try to make a little place for myself there, in that public space, and
I'm not afraid of being invoked like the famous crack
, because politics is like that historically.
Today we are witnessing the sinister advances of this administration, my feeling is one of uncertainty in every sense.
Cultural work is in danger
, because most of the time it depends on the State and that happens in all countries.
It is not something Argentine, nor Peronist, nor leftist, nor Kirchnerist.
The artist is part of society
, like a popular singer, so it makes sense that his work depends on the State.
That thing about the State seeming to disappear scares me a bit
.
My works depend on the world of literature, even though I do not dedicate myself one hundred percent to writing.
Today no one knows where to hold on.
The Murcian filmmaker and writer Luis López Carrasco won the 41st Herralde Prize for novels this Monday, while the Argentine writer and director Camila Fabbri (i) was a finalist with the work "The Queen of the Dance."
EFE/Andreu Dalmau
–You work in both non-fiction and fiction. How do you integrate all that work into your creative processes?
–I don't have it that separated.
When I have to write notes for certain media, I adapt to that, and when it is fiction, in general they are personal projects that require other times, are not immediate and do not generate economic income.
I started writing when I was little, there were many books in my house, I feel that
the craft of writing comes from afar
.
I did many workshops, I bet on that, and I read a lot, I watched a lot of movies and I listened to a lot of music, there is my greatest training.
I also like to be aware of editorial catalogues, especially the more hybrid genres of non-fiction and non-fiction, I enjoy seeing how those maps are put together.
Today my main job is giving workshops
, it's what I like the most.
I think that workshops are absolutely useful when there is an exchange, that back and forth with writers who are in the same process, receiving another person's opinion and realizing that it can change your life, as much as psychoanalysis.
Right now I'm going to a workshop with
Leila Guerriero
, I take it as a writer and I also have a very nice group that ended up becoming friends, because they are intimate and private ties.
Cultural work is in danger, because most of the time it depends on the State and that happens in all countries.
Camila FabbriWriter
–You have admired Sara Gallado, Silvina Ocampo, Rachel Cusk. What other female writers are you interested in today?
–I don't know if I agree with the idea of women writers on the one hand and male writers on the other.
At one point that was installed strongly but luckily it was dismantled.
What seems important to me is that the publishing industry shed light on publishing a lot of women, but
we were always there
, writing, we are simply better known now.
In my case, I read all the time, there are many that I like and my preferences change.
Romina Paula, Jazmina Barrera, Delphine de Vigan, Marina Closs, Sharon Olds
.
The last one I discovered was
Rebecca Solnit,
and I thought she was sublime.
The dancing queen
, by Camila Fabbri.
(Anagram).