LETRAS

On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see a cozy ramen restaurant. And only the chosen ones—those who are lost—will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets. Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop’s new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen, and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike its other customers, for he offers help instead of seeking it. Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice—by way of rain puddles, rides on paper cranes, the bridge between midnight and morning, and a night market in the clouds. But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own—and risk making a choice that she will never be able to take back.

La obra de Samuel Beckett (Dublín, 1906-París, 1989) constituye una de las más interesantes e incisivas del pasado siglo. Su extraordinaria capacidad para exponer los intersticios de la existencia social de los seres humanos, a través del absurdo, el humor y los juegos de lenguaje, imprimió en la literatura una huella indeleble y extendió sus fronteras conceptuales hasta límites nuevos. "Watt" es una novela experimental, filosófica, cómica e inclasificable que, entre otras cosas, constituye un enorme ejercicio de metaficción. En ella, su homónimo protagonista (Watt), un desharrapado del que apenas llegamos a saber nada, pasa dos años como criado en la casa del señor Knott, un enigmático y caprichoso terrateniente cuyo servicio vive en un ambiente de tensión opresiva. ¿Qué ocurre exactamente en casa del señor Knott? No lo sabemos, y sin embargo, como lectores, asistimos a la inquietante transformación que a causa de ello sufre el personaje principal, cuyos esquemas mentales se resquebrajan por completo.

Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Her career is in freefall and her love life is . . . complicated. So when her real dad—a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago—suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw. But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach you: about love, and what it actually means to be family.