Told from alternating perspectives, offers readers the chance to methodically decipher the story of Julia. A conceited “ninny,” somewhat-gifted poet, ravishing temptress, and thorny friend, Julia shapeshifts and sparkles in the blinding light of conflicting narrative. Her raconteurs? A frequently fishy chorus of acquaintances, lovers, sisters-in-law, and friends. And from behind the veil, Julia speaks for herself. Tomás González writes of the passionate origins of an affair and its precipitous conclusion, of untraceable debts and the liminal realms between the living and the dead, of New York in a blizzard and the Colombian mountain chains cloaked in fog. Chapter by chapter, each narrator’s story reveals more of Julia’s past, and the tangled love affairs and financial snarls that tie these figures to each other illuminate not just Julia’s absence, but our own human foibles. Readers will be reminded of the propulsive mysteries of , as much as the incisive literary works of Domenico Starnone, Michael Ondaatje, and Juan Gabriel Vásquez Andrea Rosenberg’s translation gleams in every line, as we are lured deeper into the elusive world of .