Review: Lithium, Malén Denis
This review was first published at https://pasuit.nl/lithium-malen-denis/, with Dutch translation by Tommy van Avermaete
Malen Denis’ Lithium is a seductive and worthwhile short work of prose. I resist calling it a novel. A better description might be an epistolary chronicle of a young woman’s twin efforts of mourning a family member and the labour of care for a mentally ill and absent ex-lover. Lithium might also be the author’s attempt to find in fictional prose a more expansive genre for a personal récit already well explored in her poetic works. Reading through her bibliography I was struck by how this 2019 work so clearly resonates with Denis’ 2009 Con una remera de Sonic Youth (“With a Sonic Youth T-Shirt”), her first published collection of poems.
Some of the many short chapters that make up the book showcase Denis’ poetic ability to combine external description and interior analysis. One of the earlier chapters, Yohaku no bi, stands on its own like a gem, and is enough of a reason for the book’s purchase. Denis’ writing shows the marks of a generous reader, and it resonates with some of Argentina’s most accomplished living authors. I am reminded of Leila Guerriero’s melancholic short essays, Mariana Enriquez’s voracity for all facets of culture, and one has the sense that Lithium’s protagonist has the same tragic heroism of an Arianna Harwicz character (before the catastrophe).
However, as a novel, the work does miss some of the scaffolding necessary to support its breadth. There is a lack of heteroglossia – the multiplicity of voices that, for Bakhtin, defines the novel’s discourse – which causes reading to veer towards a lulled sense of loneliness along the middle chapters. Furthermore the text itself seems to suffer from a fear of engagement with its core thematic of love and loss, as these are never really named but only evoked through the routines and inner wonderings described in its short chapters. As the book reaches its end, the protagonist encapsulates this ambiguity by describing love as “just a very clear idea of how I want certain things to be from now on.” As such, Lithium’s conclusion will not fully satisfy the expectations it installs in the reader.
Nonetheless, I was fascinated by the mastery of the lyrical register through which Denis manages the impressive feat of transforming all of the text’s elements - domestic objects, fragmentary conversations, animals, and even the book’s title - into a network of metaphors which complete each other’s meanings without veering into symbolism.
I would like to conclude with some short considerations of the work’s English translation by Laura Hatry, and John Wroniski. For this review I have read and compared both the original and its translation and can attest to the translators’ care and search for precision. However, Denis’ prose does not make this an easy task. This is a work clearly steeped in the localismo style that defines much of what is currently written and published in Argentina. As such, English as a language simply fails to encompass the prose’s vernacular specificity, the subtle irony of its diminutives, and the author’s effortless but sophisticated pendulation between inner monologue, direct address, and transcription of dialogue fragments. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, the precision might give to a reader less versed in the culture of Buenos Aires the sense of the protagonist’s unique melancholy and self-awareness. However, it is precisely the contrary that makes this work so endearing, its ability to so perfectly mirror the discourse of an Argentinian woman from the capital, for whom the blending of feminist irony, pop culture, and psychoanalytic discourse has become so integral.
A very clear example of this takes place in the book’s chapter “Over the Rainbow”, where, in the original, the protagonist misremembers Dorothy’s eponymous quote as “Toto, I think we’re not in Kansa anymore.” By correcting the quote in the translation (“Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”) something is lost in the error’s effacement. What is lost is Denis’ compelling ability to represent the contemporary Argentinian récit: too cynical to care about anything other than the sharp communication of its own interiority.
Still, what a joy that such a work is translated, and in such an approachable way. Denis deserves a readership that can share in that wonderful experience of watching an author develop what is already a compelling voice.