It’s very common for detective stories to not be completely independent. The main characters are often repeated—sometimes endlessly—throughout a series of novels, and at the end we feel like they are part of our lives. Claudia Piñeiro (Burzaco, Argentina, 1960) is not the author of the series, but all her fictions were independent until El tiempo de las moscas came along. This work is the heir to Tuya, which was originally written in 2008 and has reached thousands of Argentine homes since it was recommended to be read in the high school academic corpus. And one of the most recurring questions among students was what happened to Lali after such a sudden end.
At the end of Tuya, while still a teenager, Lali gives birth to Guillermina alone, her mother Inés is taken prisoner and her father is arrested. At the beginning of The Time of the Flies, Inés has just completed her sentence and sets off into a strange and unknown world for her. We had a clearly macho character in Tuya. But after a few years in a women-only prison, her view of the sorority is very different. She finds herself on the outside facing a reality where everything is changing, and the new currents of feminism find her still uneducated and with many questions to be answered.
The time of the flies is structured in three types of sections. Above all, the development of the plot itself is a story in which Inés is presented with the opportunity to make quick and easy money thanks to her work as a pest exterminator. The second is a series of theses, internal monologues, in which Inés informs himself about flies and whether it is legal to end his life, based on the fact that he has served a prison sentence for murder. Third, the sections told by a choir in the style of a Greek tragedy are a description of the arguments about feminism and the main issues that have generated controversy within the movement, such as inclusive language or transphobia.
It’s not the first time the author has resorted to this kind of trick – in Las maldiciones this technique is crucial to the book’s development – and the arrangement of these plot breaks is not accidental. The tone changes, the speech ends because of all the voices playing it, and it is even possible to provide a bibliography of what was discussed at the end of each choral debate. It’s a remote possibility for a piece of fiction, but it’s a working one.
Piñeiro showed, novel by novel, that he wasn’t afraid of complex stories full of knots to unravel. If in the cathedrals he has presented us with a crime that is almost impossible to assimilate, here he risks a netless triple somersault. The plot bends to indefensible limits, and the author triumphs thanks to his narrative skill. Character creation is one of its strengths. Moreover, the dialogues of El timepo de las moscas are more dazzling than ever, an element with such a presence that it gains strength even on a visual level, thanks to the use of silences represented by ellipses. Perfect work.