AUTHOR: Andrés Felipe Solano
PUBLISHER: Narrativa Sexto Piso
GENRE: Fiction/memoir
READER’S NAME: Jamie Mullin
DATE: August 18th, 2023

In Gloria, Andrés Felipe Solano reconstructs his mother’s life after leaving Colombia for New York City as a young woman. The story doesn’t follow a straight line; instead, it mainly centers around one significant day of Gloria’s life in New York City that the reader returns to again and again throughout the novel. Along the way, we learn of Gloria’s various jobs over the years, her friends and acquaintances, romantic relationships, the family she left behind and lost in Colombia, and the husband and children she would one day have.

The story is primarily written in the third person as the author reimages his mother’s life, and at times in the first person as he recounts his own experiences in New York and childhood recollections. Moving from past to future and back again, the author takes the reader on a personal journey in which it becomes clear that in order to truly know his mother is to know New York City as she saw and lived it at age 20, with her newly found independence and discoveries, questioning what the future might hold.

The novel touches on a number of themes, some of which include family history, complex family relationships, sexuality, coming to terms with the loss of a parent at a young age, finding oneself in brief encounters with strangers and in moments of solitude, as well as the freedom found in solitude itself.

Common themes like those mentioned above are treated in an original way. The overall storyline is at times constructed in fragments as memory often is, hopping between the present, past and future, with a variety of plotlines blending together to form a work that is intriguing, engaging and also quite moving and personal. I believe this novel is an excellent candidate for translation and would be well received in the US.

Andrés Felipe Solano’s previous novels include Sálvame, Joe Louis, Los hermanos Cuervo, and Cementerios de neon.