MOTHERS

The lives of two mothers in Mexico City are upended in different ways in the latest novel by award-winning Mexican author Lozano.

In 1946, as Mexico is “plagued by a wave of kidnappings,” 2-year-old Gloria Miranda Felipe disappears from the front yard of her upper-class home. The police are understaffed and underpaid, but by enlisting the media and offering a large reward, her desperate family makes the case a cause célèbre. Elsewhere in the same city, another mother has finally adopted a child after trying for years to conceive. Lozano’s interests lie in large questions—societal expectations of mothers and the corresponding pressures to conform, how economic inequality determines who matters in a crisis. Lozano has a good eye for detail—she describes a minor character with “an explosive laugh like that moment when a plate breaks in a restaurant and everyone turns around.” Nuria, the mother unable to conceive, “had gotten used to the sensation of being the one left standing in a game of musical chairs.” Lozano’s wry humor threads through the book. “I wouldn’t want you thinking I was some male omniscient narrator,” she announces early on. “I’m not a third-person know-it-all who controls the story…I’m a woman, and also a third-person narrator. This is my job.” And as in her earlier books Loop (2021) and Witches (2022), she plays with narrative and point of view as the story expands. Though at times the larger themes feel less than fully developed, the initial mystery of Gloria’s disappearance gives way to deeper mysteries, taking the reader to unexpected places.

Another ambitious and original work from a writer who is always worth watching.