Space Invaders

Space Invaders / Nona Fernandez
translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer
Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2019, c2013.
96 p.

This slim book seems straightforward, but it's really not.

The action is in the recollection of 1980s Chile, during the authoritarian Pinochet years. It's the story of a group of friends recalling their memories of a childhood classmate, Estrella. They dream about her, remember specific events and interactions both at school and at her home. They reveal letters that Estrella wrote, letters that at one point stopped coming.

The children are fairly innocent, but slowly come to realize that Estrella's father is someone high up in the government, someone involved in the arrests and murders of resistance fighters. Despite their growing sense of what's going on in their world, they are still young, "we're kids" as one of them says -- they're powerless to do much to change their situation. Space Invaders is a game that Estrella has; some of them go over to her fancy rich house to play, and the symbolism of fighting against invaders is carried on throughout the book. Even the sections are named after video game elements. 

This is quite short, but surprisingly dense. The recollections and dreams of Estrella overlap and create a polyphonic image of her, and of all their childhoods. It's powerful and evocative.

And the finale, in the contemporary timeline, which explains why they are all thinking about her...well, it was unexpected. A bit shocking, but all connected to the controlled violence that runs rampant in this story. 

Definitely one to read if you have any interest in poetic language describing innocence under dictatorship. It's haunting, really.