PERLA

In a young girl’s ingenuous voice, author-narrator Carolina De Robertis recounts 21-year-old Perla’s awakening to the atrocities of Argentina’s dirty war of the 1970s, her military father’s role in the junta’s brutality, and the grim specifics of what happened to thousands of Argentines who “disappeared.” The ghostly appearance of a wet, naked man in her apartment disrupts Perla’s tidy life, and as they exchange remembrances, Perla discovers disturbing truths about her past. De Robertis’s reading is convincing as Perla hears the ghost-man’s painful stream-of-consciousness telling of beatings, rape, and torture. As the shocking details of inhumanity register, Perla’s family memories take on new significance. De Robertis’s lyrical writing and understated performance make the unimaginable both horrific and poetic. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine [Published: MAY 2012]