Splinters of a Divorce and Other Stories

«Semen and Punishment. Tell me where the semen is, and I’ll tell you where the guilt lies».

A thread as subtle as it is powerful runs through the stories gathered here: body and soul. Bodies and souls of women and men who meet and part ways, between mirages and misunderstandings. In these pages, the fact that a story “of love” comes together is nothing short of a miracle. For the writer, those quotation marks are non-negotiable.

Catalina Murillo once again demonstrates her ability to analyze the human psyche. In some of her stories, it feels as if she lays the characters out on the dissection table. As she usually does in her narrative, while telling the story she also questions the very act of storytelling. From one story to another, she offers a wide palette of registers and eras. In one story, the writer of today speaks with the protagonist of the past; in another, she reveals how the story was told; in some, her voice is very present, in others it disappears.

Catalina’s purpose is to provoke, until you might find yourself thinking: “How is it that it has taken me forty-seven years to get to… me.”