January 20, 2016

Dry Season - Gabriela Babnik


Istros Books, November 2015.



Four Stars



Burkino Faso is an unusual setting for a writer from Central Europe, but the unexpectedness adds another layer to the story. Ana, a Slovenian woman in her 60s, travels to the small African nation and begins an affair with 27-year-old Ismael. They are united by loneliness and tragic pasts, filled with both emotional and physical abuse. Ana’s world is in the west, yet she has essentially rejected it – she prefers to embrace Ismael’s African culture.


At first it seems like colonial appropriation, but as Ana’s story unfolds, it reads more like a twist on intersectional feminism: Ana as a repressed woman forming a bond with another “other.” Her thoughts only begin to veer into racism as she idealizes the “innocence” of the African people and views Ismael as a naïve young boy – in fact, he has experienced much more in his short life than she has in her sixty-two years. She acts as though his innocence will rub off on her, and make her whole again after the losses she has suffered back in Europe.


The novel is written in alternating POVs, which made it hard to get into because it wasn’t always clear who was narrating. The voice switches with no headings – I’m not sure if that was a problem with the ARC, or whether it was meant to be disconcerting, adding unexpected confusion. On top of that, Ana is an unreliable narrator, and even she seems to be unclear about which events are real: “But that had been a happy time, so happy that, especially when I look back on it, maybe it never happened.” (Loc. 397)


Ana was adopted, and she is not at all grateful to her adoptive parents. She has no respect for them, and says it would have made no difference if they had left her on the orphanage floor. Ismael is an outsider too, and he can relate to the difficulties of family life. Ana leaves Slovenia because of issues with her adult son, then takes a lover that is younger than he is. Upon seeing Ismael naked, she is reminded of her son. Likewise, Ismael dreams frequently of his mother during his relationship with Ana – it is all very Freudian.


The method of storytelling is often postmodern, with hints of magic realism (and even a nod to One Hundred Years of Solitude when Ana refers to “Remedios the Beauty”), but it is old-fashioned at times too. It reads like a chronological memoir, but the narrators also speak directly to the reader. Eventually, Ana begins to mix up past and present, with memory overlapping reality. There are many metafictional references to writing and novels, and it becomes hard to tell whether either character is real or just a figment of the other’s imagination – are they each a creation of the others’ deepest hopes and fears?


The setting was filled with great details, and I wanted to hear much more about it. The plot was subtle and nostalgic, drifting through dreams and memory. Ana and Ismael, real or imagined, come together because they are lonely – but neither one can complete the other because they are not whole themselves. Dreamlike and often magical, this was a beautiful story about sadness and loss between two very different cultures.


I received this novel from Istros Books and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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