Natalia is a young arachnologist who was raised by a mother who is still resentful for getting pregnant by an unreliable man. When Natalia finds out that the father she never got to know died four years before, she feels the need to discover who he was and, in turn, who she is. Hence, against the advice of her mum, plans a trip with her reluctant boyfriend to the provincial town of Irapuato, where her father spent his last years: she will wander the streets in search of a ghost, and of a fugitive dog, and eventually come across some answers. Although not those she was looking for.

Intertwining the search for the father figure and the inter-species dialogue between humans and spiders, García investigates from different angles our way of experiencing the world and thinking about ourselves. In exploring a family history, she spins a web-like narrative that patiently weaves together different scenes with a fresh and accurate style and no concessions to sentimentalism.

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“Nayeli García Sánchez’s prose reminds me of the deceptive simplicity of the masters of the Italian novels of the 20th century (Natalia Ginzburg above all): a method of precise dryness that ends up piercing the armour of our emotions.” & “Nayeli has great ability for dialogue, collects non-literary textual objects as a narrative sounding board, and practices a meticulous mimesis – three features that bring her technique close to minimalism” — Julián Herbert

“Language in this novel is something special – tense at all times, but also fragile: like the thread of spiders, insects that appear throughout the novel, to the point that, like reality itself, one cannot be sure when they are true and when not.” — Emiliano Monge, Letras Americanas

“This fast-paced novel, with a dark and delicious humor, tells the odyssey of a girl in search of her father, whom she saw only one day in her life. Along the way, opposite drives pull at her: longing and shame, care and destruction, desire for roots and uprooting.” — Jazmina Barrera, El País

“If we want to trace a genealogy of great names in Nayeli García Sánchez’s novel, we could range from Homer, who narrated Telemachus’s journey to meet Ulysses, through The Adolescent by Dostoevsky, and reach as definitive stop or last bead of the necklace Pedro Páramo.” — Paula Vazquez

“The search for the father ends up becoming an expedition to the depths of oneself in a prose that stands out for its beauty and wisdom.” — La Jornada

“A novel with hints of a road story that recalls the work of Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo, and makes profound meditations on absent fatherhood. With a great sense of rhythm García Sanchez puts the living to chase the dead and creates a protagonist who is a modern Telemachus.” — La Razón

“[Thanks to]…a rich variety of stylistic strokes and psychological depth…a disturbing announcement takes shape, as if we were witnesses to the patient creation of a spider’s web: that there are no species as distant as our parents.” — Milenio

 

170 pages – Original language: Spanish/Spain (Editorial Barrett, 2023), Spanish/Mexico (Sexto Piso, 2024).