The Family

Press & Reviews

‘In wonderfully unsettling prose, Sara Mesa traces strange and delicate constellations that glow with psychological insight.’
–Chloe Aridjis, author of The Shadow of the Object

'Sara Mesa’s writing is mysterious and fascinating: her characters brush against the limits in environments of fierce false calm. Un Amor is one of her best novels – tense and beautiful like a crouching bird.'
– Mariana Enríquez, author of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed

'When I read Sara Mesa, I’m there in the Wild West, sifting through the sand. There is a restless enjoyment, an inhospitable beauty, in my sieve. And then something miraculous when gold appears before my eyes.'
–Eva Baltasar, author of Boulder

'Sara Mesa sees the world through the lens of power, exploring how questions of strength and weakness shape human behaviour.’– Annie McDermott, The TLS

‘If, as Tolstoy wrote, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, then it might also be said that each member of a family is unhappy in their own way. This is made explicitly clear in The Family by Sara Mesa, translated from Spanish by Katie Whittemore, in which we gradually gain details about a family in which the father’s fiercely idealistic principles are filtered through his wife and four children...We learn a great deal about the adult lives of each family member and the diverse ways in which they negotiated the conflicted legacy of their childhood. This is all achieved with virtuosic ease and economy by Mesa, whose choice of what to reveal and when makes this an exceptionally engaging novel that finishes with an unanticipated insight into the father, which beautifully complicates our understanding of a misguided man.’
–Declan O’Driscoll, The Irish Times

'I tremble while reading Sara Mesa. The Family is an amazing book, and an astonishing translation. This should win all the awards.'
–Brian Willems, author of Henry, Henry and The Surviving Cells