The Woman from Uruguay

'This story of lust and middle-aged angst resonates long after the novel has ended ... Intimate, irreverent, fast-paced and raw ... Reminiscent of Geoff Dyer in elegiac mode, or the angry, funny, rueful work of Luke Brown ... A deeply unconventional love letter' * Sunday Times *
The Woman from Uruguay is at once a picaresque comedy and a penetrating study of a man on the verge of middle age who is trying to deal with fatherhood, money, marriage and love. Lucas's vivid presence in this book is created by his rich way of observing the world. As he travels from Buenos Aires to Montevideo, over seventeen hours, a whole world comes into being, a complex sensibility gets dramatized -- Colm Toibin
Beautifully written and translated, The Woman from Uruguay is a work of exquisite style, shrewd philosophical insight, and deftly controlled suspense. A searing tale of seduction and betrayal, both wryly comic and deeply serious. * Sigrid Nunez, author of THE FRIEND and WHAT ARE YOU GOING THROUGH *
The Woman from Uruguay is a gem; as perfectly formed as a tide-washed pebble, brimming with astute observations and insight into the foibles of masculinity. I loved it * Graeme Macrae Burnet *
Shrewd, funny and involving .. Unfolding over the course of one day, this slim, witty and wryly heart-warming book is both a comic treat and a deftly insightful piece of literary fiction * Daunt, Books of the Week *
A tender meditation on desire and the fragility of the human heart, translated elegantly by Man Booker International winner Jennifer Croft … [a] profound novel * Chicago Review of Books *
A perfect novel. A triumph from beginning to end. The novel’s style, that carries the soft irony of a writer in command of his narrative voice, its extension, its verbal prowess, its impeccably paced rhythm and, of course, the theme: a marital crisis written from the perspective of an Argentine man in his mid forties who is facing an existential crisis. * El Pais (Spain) *
[Pedro Mairal] displays his full talent in a wisely structured novel, outstanding in its narrative rhythm and in the twists and turns of the plot, where humor emerges at the same time a tragedy takes shape surrounding an enigma . . . A story about love and its imponderables. * Página 12 (Argentina) *
Eminently readable ... Witty ... Mairal gives his character the gift of frankness, and in his uncomfortable admissions and meandering reflections, Lucas, too, comes to accept the limits of his agency and the ineluctable force of reality * Claie Messud, Harper's *
I wasn’t able to put the book down. * María Dueñas *
A perfect novel. * Edmundo Paz Soldan *
A bittersweet meditation on love, desire and ageing ... A psychologically astute novella … Pitch-perfect * Guardian *
Mairal shines a fresh light into the cave of being middle aged. Hidden inside a mountain of adult responsibilities, Mairal's narrator revolts in known ways, with infidelity and travel, and yet Mairel's acute insights and the lyrical precision of Jennifer Croft's translation, cast a new glow on the unexpected pleasures to be found in the middle of life. An absolute delight of a novel -- Idra Novey, author of Those Who Knew
The loss and recovery of desire, the ambition of everlasting adventures, the earthquake of becoming a father, the flight forward . . . all these things occur in a single day (. . .), interwoven in the brilliant prose of Pedro Mairal, one of the best Latin American writers of our time. * Leila Guerriero *