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HOW TO ORDER THE UNIVERSE by María José Ferrada Kirkus Star

HOW TO ORDER THE UNIVERSE

by María José Ferrada ; translated by Elizabeth Bryer

Pub Date: Feb. 16th, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-951142-30-8
Publisher: Tin House

A traveling salesman and his daughter traverse Chile.

“Every person tries to explain the inner workings of things with whatever is at hand,” says M, the charming narrator of Ferrada’s English-language debut. “I, at seven years of age, had reached out my hand, and had grasped a Kramp catalogue.” Kramp is a brand of hardware products that M’s father, a traveling salesman, hawks in various small towns across their native Chile. M takes to skipping school so she can accompany her father, D. Along the way, she acquires various bits of hardware-related wisdom. For instance: “Every construction is the sum of its parts, parts that are joined by fittings.” M and D quickly discover that M’s presence positively impacts D’s chances of making a sale, and before long, she’s missing weeks of school at a stretch. Things grow more complicated when E, a photographer, starts traveling with them in search of “ghosts.” These are the Pinochet years, it turns out, and what has seemed at first to have all the charm and magic of a fairy tale carries a much darker underbelly as well. Ferrada, who has published several children’s books, excels in her depictions of M’s 7-year-old state of mind, her attempts to understand the world she’s been born into. The book progresses at a quick clip until it is stalled by a scene of some horror. Then M must find a new way to find order in her family and in the wider world.

This quick and quirky book is as charming as it is unsettling, as appealing as it is wise.