After the breakup with Tordo, Verónica takes on a job organizing the archive of a recently deceased writer, Marisa, mother to a graduate student named Alonso. This loss is not her first, and is only one of many in the book: the seven-year-and-ongoing disappearance of Verónica’s mother the generational disconnections caused by exile the holes left by broken romances. The book begins in Mexico City as Verónica’s boyfriend Tordo ends their relationship. Acutely observant and persistently curious, Verónica’s voice powers the novel, guiding readers to travel its winding route with the same patience and wonder as its protagonist. Its fragmentary written vignettes are interspersed with sketches and explanatory diagrams that illustrate and, in some cases, build the understandings of its twenty-two-year-old narrator, Verónica. Empty Set makes no attempt to tell only with words. “There are-I’m certain of this-things that can’t be told in words,” explains the self-described “visual artist who writes” Verónica Gerber Bicecci in her novel Empty Set, translated from Spanish by Christina MacSweeney. Empty Set by Verónica Gerber Bicecci, translated by Christina MacSweeney
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