Translated from Spanish by Frances Riddle
Published by Charco Press, 2023, 210 pages. Original version published in 2015.

“It takes so many words to recount events that occur in a matter of minutes, seconds, fractions of time that are barely perceptible. Things happen so quickly that the words needed to describe them are never able to keep up. Just as it can take years for fleeting events to be forgotten. Sometimes, those memories will never fade. An instant can stay with us our entire lives, relived in words a thousand times over like a punishment. Time is compressed and the narration of that time has to expand it to make it comprehensible.”

Mary Lohan is flying to Argentina, to Temperley on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, to assess whether Saint Peter’s School is ready to be affiliated to the Garlik Institute, a prestigious US school that uses a particular teaching method. The institute is the brainchild of Robert Lohan, with whom Mary lives in Boston.

Except that Mary Lohan is actually María Elena Pujol, or Marilé, who left Temperley 20 years ago because of something that had happened there. She is reluctant to return, but has been asked to go and assess the school—the one place she wants to avoid. On the other hand, it may be time she came to terms with her past. Maybe, deep down, she has been waiting for something to push her into returning. “A decision made by destiny or by fate but not by me. To return. Not just to my homeland, Argentina, not just to the very city where I’d lived, Temperley, but back to Saint Peter’s School itself. A return that, like some kind of Russian doll, ends in that miniature world: an English school on the southern edge of Greater Buenos Aires, a place I loved and hated with the same intensity.”

Although nervous about returning, Marilé does not think she will be recognized. The people she will meet at the school think she is American. She has changed her appearance—she is no longer blonde and wears brown contact lenses to hide her blue eyes. Moreover, it has been 20 years since anyone saw or heard from her.

There is one person she desperately wants to see but, at the same time, she is afraid to come face to face with him. Will she see him in the course of her work at the school?

There is a recurring incident about cars stopped at a railway crossing: it starts the book and recurs throughout, each time with a bit more detail.

I won’t give away any more of the plot. Claudia Piñeiro gives us Marilé’s story little by little, and one of the pleasures of this book is discovering what really happened.  

In reading A Little Luck, I knew that I was in the hands of someone who knows how to tell a story: the pacing is masterful and I liked the way it is structured. But most of all, it is the emotional truth that comes through in the novel. This is the portrait of a woman who has been through a lot of pain and hurt but has managed to survive.

Piñeiro is known for her crime fiction, but her latest two novels to be translated into English, Elena Knows and A Little Luck, are more about people and society: the hypocrisy and double standards, the tendency to judge others, and the thoughtlessness with which people can cause pain. These are things that will resonate with readers, no matter where they are.

This is a beautifully written book, and Frances Riddle’s translation does justice to it. The fact that Marilé’s story unfolds gradually makes it all the more compelling. I loved this book and is one that I will go back to.

Read the Talking About Books interview with Claudia Piñeiro.

Read my review of Claudia Piñeiro’s Elena Knows.