By Mercedes Rosende @mujerequivocada
Translated by Tim Gutteridge @TimG_translator
Published by Bitter Lemon Press https://www.bitterlemonpress.com/ @bitterlemonpub
271 pages 9781913394745
Publication date 23 February 2023
I was sent a paperback copy to enable me to take part in this Blog Tour. I would like to thank Anne at Random Things Tours @RandomTTours for the invitation to participate and of course the Author and Publisher.
The cover
Early evening traffic, fairly unremarkable but I love the strapline ‘murder and mayhem in Montevideo’. That grabbed my attention.
From the blurb
The attempted robbery of the armoured car in the back streets of Montevideo is a miserable failure. A lucky break for the intrepid Ursula Lopez who manages to snatch all the loot, more hindered than helped by her faint-hearted and reluctant companion Diego. Only now, the wannabe robbers are hot on her heels. As is the police. And Ursula’s sister. But Ursula turns out to be enormously talented when it comes to criminal undertakings, and given the hilarious ineptitude of those in pursuit, she might just pull it off. She is an irresistible heroine. A murderess with a sense of humour, a lovable criminal with an edge and she is practically invisible to the men who dominate the deeply macho society of Uruguay.
My thoughts
In the last twelve months I have made a conscious effort to broaden the geographical horizons of my crime reading and I am doing well. The Blog has covered plenty of Scandinavian noir of course, but also some Antipodean and a few from Latin America. So, the opportunity of a stop off in Montevideo Uruguay was too good to turn down, not that I know much about the place other than some rather brutal footballers from the past.
The story is an unusual one, essentially taking place after the heist rather than covering its planning and execution. In that there is some connection with the movie Reservoir Dogs but the similarities end there, as this is entirely different in style. it can perhaps be summed up as the pursuit of the loot, as corrupt law officers have publicly said that all involved were killed in the scene and the money destroyed in the raid. One of the raiders, Diego, has the money and the plot revolves around a group of people trying to get their hands on it. A simple plot but one that is cleverly constructed and executed, one that piques the reader’s curiosity and feels rather devious right up to the clever finale.
It’s the characters that bring the story to life and a right oddball collection they are. The heroine Ursula is an attractive if slightly overweight woman of 48 who translates poetry for a living and maintains a love-hate relationship with the spirit of her dead father. Described by him as a black hole she is unreadable but also strong willed and inventive. Her sister Luz is beautiful, slender and glamorous, rich by marriage and in the process of trading up in model. Diego is so highly strung as to be a liability, his anxiety level is off the scale has he trying to lay low with the money for a month. He is indebted to Ursula who saved his life by shooting fellow robber ‘Hobo’. How Ursula came to be at the original crime scene is serendipitous and one I will leave the reader to discover.
In pursuit are a corrupt detective and a borderline psychopathic lawyer, who is handy with a rocket propelled grenade, responsible for masterminding the raid. Of course, nothing in life is simple though. Luz believes Ursula may know more about the death of their Aunt Irene and so employs a private detective to follow her, and what an unusual gumshoe this proves to be. Not all police are corrupt, and a female Captain doesn’t buy the explanations of her superior and though warned off the case, in true good cop fashion follows up in her own time. A veritable conga line of people who are either after a suitcase stuffed with cash, or the people who are after the cash. This results in some fabulous interactions as their paths cross and converge. Even love manages to blossom in this unlikely setting.
The tone is light, it’s a crime caper rather than an investigation into the dark hearts of criminals. The humour is nicely judged being more farce (like kidnappers falling asleep) than of a jet-black hue. The translator has clearly done a great job in keeping the prose light and entertaining. There is even a cheeky self-reference as lawyer Antinucci leafs through some crime novels and decides to purchase Crocodile Tears, the novel before this one. A nice bit of chutzpah, well why not.
The perspective is quite unusual, there are sections in first person, but mainly it is third person. However, the third person is more of a narrator, with a jokey and friendly persona, observing events and describing them whilst occasionally doing the written equivalent of breaking the fourth wall. Quirky and distinctive it works well.
As a setting Old Town Montevideo is lovingly portrayed with its old style classical, albeit somewhat faded, beauty. Picturesque and photogenic, part colonial, part modernised but without the poverty and decrepit seediness of Havana. A city where Punta Carretas Prison, close to the centre, can be demolished are replaced by a shopping mall, gone but not forgotten as the reader discovers.
The Hand That Feeds You is a quirky crime caper, entertainingly written with more than a dash of Latin flair. Another winner from the inventive Bitter Lemon Press.
The Hand That Feeds You can be purchased via the publisher’s website here
The author
Mercedes Rosende was born in 1958 in Montevideo, Uruguay. She is a lawyer and a journalist when not writing fiction. She has won many prizes for her novels and short
stories. In 2005 she won the Premio Municipal de Narrativa für Demasiados Blues, in 2008 the National Literature Prize for La Muerte Tendrá tus Ojos and in 2019 the LiBeraturpreis in Germany for Crocodile Tears.
The translator
Tim Gutteridge is a Scottish literary translator based in Edinburgh. He works from Spanish and Catalan into English. His translation of Potosí (Ander Izagirre) won a PEN Translates Award and was published by Zed Books as The Mountain that Eats Men.
Don’t forget to check out the previous reviews on this Blog Tour:
Peter turns the page 