Reading guide: Not a River by Selva Almada, translated by Annie McDermott

Enero

A childhood friend of El Negro and Eusebio, he lost a finger while cleaning his firearm not long after Eusebio died. 

El Negro

Close to his childhood friends, El Negro considered Enero’s mother Delia – and his five sisters – as the closest things to a mother he’d ever known after losing his own mother at birth.

Tilo

Tilo is the teenage son of Eusebio, Enero and El Negro’s recently deceased friend. He joins the two older men on a fishing trip to the Paraná River. 

Annie McDermott is the translator of a dozen books from Spanish and Portuguese into English. McDermott has translated such writers as Mario Levrero, Selva Almada, Fernanda Trías and Lídia Jorge. In 2022, she was awarded the Premio Valle Inclán for her translation of Joseph Zárate’s Wars of the Interior.

‘Not A River moves like water, in currents of dream and overlaps of time which shape the stories and memories of Enero and El Negro, the adult friends and default mentors of young Tilo, whom they have brought with them on a fishing trip along the Paraná River. The island where they set up camp pulses with its own desires and angers, tensions equal to if not exceeding those of the men who have come together on its shores. Alongside the story of these grief-marred men, Almada wages small and tender resistances through the women of the town – and what luck to root for or mourn them – the mother whose ever-growing fires engulf us, her two flirtatious, youth-glowed daughters, and the almost-mythical manta ray who becomes one of the guardians and ghosts of this throbbing, feverish novel.’

How would you summarise this book in a sentence to encourage readers to pick it up? 

A story of three friends on a fishing trip and a river in Argentina. This deceptively simple short novel contains a deep sense of foreboding and memories of past traumas, turning a seemingly bucolic trip into a haunted story. 

Is there something unique about this book, something that you haven’t encountered in fiction before? 

The economy and clarity of the writing hold you from the very beginning. The abrupt transitions – a single sentence undoing the calm progression of life – is a great narrative skill; a written form somehow encompassing the shattered form of life it describes.  

What do you think it is about this book that readers will not only admire, but really love? 

The growing antagonism of the locals towards the three fishermen, who are seen as intruding into their space, keep us in suspense for each page. We know something bad will happen, but cannot anticipate it, until it does. 

Can you tell us about any particular characters that readers might connect with, and why? 

The characters in the book are all wonderful. But what is really remarkable is the clarity and economy of language. The author feels like a secure guide, taking us by the hand through dangerous terrain.

‘For Not a River, I read a whole stack of fishing-related books, from Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea to The River Why, David James Duncan’s genuinely wonderful account of a life spent trout-fishing in Oregon, and I also spent hours trawling (no pun intended) through fishing forums and YouTube videos. But the fishing side of things was only part of it – I also read everything I could think of that would help with the oral language that’s used in the novel, and for the spare, stripped-back way the characters and narrator speak. This included William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Bryan Washington and Sophie Mackintosh, and most of all Cormac McCarthy, without whose books I might never have found Selva Almada’s English voice.’

Read the full interview here.

Almada uses short sentences that take on a more lyrical construction in Not a River. The translator, Annie McDermott says in her Translator’s Note at the end of the book that Almada’s work ‘is defined by her ability to capture the patterns and rhythms of everyday speech and turn them into spare, perfectly-weighted poetry.’ To what extent do you agree with her interpretation?

The topic of masculinity is included in numerous ways within Not a River – for example, in the ego-driven behaviours that arise and the way the main character process their grief. With Almada writing not from a male experience, would you say she relays these experiences in a more effective way because she has an objective point of view?

Annie McDermott said in her Translator’s Note that, ‘the line breaks and lack of chapter divisions make the text itself river-shaped, its short sentences lapping at the silence like waves on the shore.’ Do you think that the way the story is structured represents a flowing river? What are some examples that show this?

There are many examples in the book of how the past and present are not presented in chronological order. Do you think the book’s lack of clear signposting or straightforward chronology makes it harder for the reader to follow along? Or does it have a more powerful impact because of its unusual structure?

It has been noted that Not a River is the final book in the thematically-connected trilogy by Almada, including two other books, The Wind That Lays Waste and Brickmakers. If you’ve read Almada’s previous works, how have you noticed the connections between these three novels? If you haven’t read them, how does the fact that you are coming to the third part of a trilogy first impact your reading of it?

After Enero left the police academy, he was posted to a little town in the north of the province. In the six months he was there, he didn’t see his family or friends once. Something bothered him in both his new and his old life, and he felt like he didn’t fit in. Why do you think Enero felt this way and what made him not want to visit home while he was away?

Siomara says that ‘women with sons are never ready for tragedy.’ How do the differing experiences of men and women relate to this quote and why do you think Siomara believes this to be true?

Both Enero and Mariela have prophetic dreams that are tied to future events. Enero’s Godfather, Gutierrez who is the town healer says, ‘Sometimes dreams are echoes of the future.’ How does this set up future events and what’s to come? 

Why do you think that El Negro, Enero and Tilo can see Lucy and Mariela, what do you think is Almada’s reasoning behind adding that particular part into the novel?

Not a River was inspired by a conversation that Almada had with a friend at a barbecue, telling her about a giant stingray he caught by shooting it with a gun. Why do you think Almada has used that as her opening scene?

The Wind That Lays Waste by Selva Almada

Brickmakers by Selva Almada

Dead Girls by Selva Almada