Synopsis

Every family is a planet governed by laws as precise as they are mysterious. The sun of this family is the father, a dark, rebellious sun, yet when he chooses to give of himself, he expresses an unparalleled warmth. Melancholy, alcoholism, depression, illness are the frightening and unexpected eclipses, the bonds that impede movement, the unpronounceable words. Words that the daughter, now an adult, pursues and recovers in the labyrinths of memory. Because in the very act of recounting, naming what has always been silenced, hidden, lies a cathartic potential, the possibility of rejecting the toxic element in the nourishment that raised us. Without rancor, because "there are no wrongs, and in this act of writing there is so much of my father and of what could have been, because the unspoken words of silenced men resonate in the voices of daughters who are no longer ashamed." The author effectively juxtaposes the perspective of her childhood self—who has a partial vision of things and can only interpret what happens around her through a childish and then adolescent filter—with that of the adult woman who has reconstructed, understood, and meditated, and has come to accept the mystery that our parents often remain.