Thursday Night Widows

Claudia Piñeiro’s Thursday Night Widows is a whodunnit, a black comedy, a social portrait and a prophecy, a timely dissection of the disintegration of a privileged class and an important addition to 21st Century Latin American fiction. Set in Argentina in the build-up to the economic collapse of 2001, it confronts credit-crunch anxiety with acerbic wit, merciless satire and a finely-tuned sense of sadness.

In an exclusive gated community outside Buenos Aires, three bodies are found in a swimming pool. The mystery of these deaths haunts the book, while Piñeiro moves back in time to study the unravelling lives of the community’s inhabitants as they fight, have affairs, cope with their personal demons and ignore both the poverty of the barrios beyond their walls and their own precarious financial position. As community life disintegrates, omens abound: disaffected children turn feral, stray dogs invade the well-kept streets, and there are suspicions of witchcraft and infidelity. The community’s final catastrophe is inevitable, but here the author’s background as a scriptwriter and writer of crime thrillers becomes apparent.

The novel’s deeper points never obscure the satisfyingly clockwork mechanism of its plot, and its final section delivers a sucker-punch of considerable force. The reader tears through the last few pages appalled and delighted, gasping for air.

[Winner of the Clarìn Prize for Fiction; soon to be made into a film.]