La promesa

A woman leans over the railing of an ocean liner to pick up a brooch and accidentally falls overboard. As the ship moves away from her, she makes a promise to Saint Rita, the "advocate of the impossible": if she manages to save herself, she will write the story of her life. People and places parade before her eyes, forming a "dictionary of memories" that are often cruel or disturbing, while the sea surrounds her with all its fury. Little by little, the castaway's imagination begins to play with those images of the past as if it wanted to distract her from the dangers that threaten her, until the borders between what she experienced and what she dreamed become blurred in a narrative that becomes increasingly more exuberant. , more poetic, as the end comes into view. Written in the early sixties and subjected to several rewrites during the following decades, this "ghostly novel" remained unpublished during its author's lifetime. Published for the first time in 2011, The Promise dazzles with its formal audacity, the inventions of its plot and the always inspired prose of Silvina Ocampo.