Through the Forest

Griselda is the mother of three children, two boys and one girl. On a winter day in the mid-1980s, while exiled in France, she drowned her two sons in the bathtub. After a lapse of more than thirty years, the narrator tracks down the survivors of this family tragedy. She delves into their story in an attempt to approach these barely credible events, and ends up – in the depths of darkness – getting a glimpse of love and life. Laura Alcoba’s subtle, gentle writing accurately captures her characters’ humanity, without any overwrought sentiment, nor emphasis, in spite of the horrific facts. We feel the presence of beings resonating without, however, anyone ever being able to unlock the mystery of Griselda’s act – even Griselda herself.

“The delicacy and intelligence shown by Laura Alcoba to tell or, more exactly, to try to understand the ins and outs of the double infanticide which took place in an apartment of Argentinian exiles that she herself frequented as a child, make Through the Forest an even more exceptional book.”

—Le Monde

“This is Laura Alcoba’s power: to open breaches, to write and to be silent in order to tell the unspeakable, the exile, the infanticide, the silence, and at the end of the night, love and desire remain anyway.”

—AOC