Absolutely charming novel about a young girl who joins her father on his sales trips. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road meets Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies.
For 7-year-old M, the world has a clear set of guiding principles to which her father D prescribes. D is a travelling salesman and M convinces him to take her along on his routes, selling various hardware supplies and meeting other salesman who specialize in hats or perfumes. The novel is set in Chile during the Pinochet era, but this is not immediately clear to the reader as the story is told, with innocence, from M’s perspective.
Maria Jose Ferrada captures this time through a child’s eyes. She takes the reader through the charming stages of a father-daughter relationship on the road, and then the experiences that shatter their trust and safety. It’s a simple novel about the complex ways our world can fall apart. It’s about the certainty of how things are, which we latch onto as children yet have to give up as adults.
I loved this little book.
Perfect for fans of Kerouac, who don’t mind a softer touch to the road-trip story. Fans of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time will like the quiet innocence and quirky thoughts of this 7-year-old protagonist. And fans of Isabel Allende, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Julia Alvarez will like the familiar feel of Latin American storytelling.