Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You, the enthralling second novel by Julián Delgado Lopera (Fiebre Tropical), is a father-daughter saga knotted into the "Travesti Lore" of a queer community in Bogotá, Colombia.
"It is a known fact that some people grow to be old, while others become birds or panthers or beasts. Some people even turn into rivers," begins the narrator, sage "travesti godmother" Mamadora Eléctrica. She is better known as Tía Mama to teenage Valentina, whose father, Ignacio, is "not only cansao, Papi is agotao. Depleted." Tía Mama has cared for this troubled pair since long before Valentina's mother, Alma, was found dead in a river. Valentina believes that this tragedy connects her to Natalia, a "stunning supermodelo amputee" whose mother died in the notoriously violent Magdalena River. The TV star's beauty and resilience buoy Valentina as she is swept into a tense custody battle between Alma's family and Ignacio.
Meanwhile, Ignacio's own youth in the village of Ebaguí cascades along alternating chapters. He dutifully helps run the family store and excels as a football player, while secretly indulging in feminine hairstyles and postures. These fascinations eventually lead him to Felipe, the new kid, whose open flamboyance sets the whole town on edge.
Delgado Lopera's inimitable prose blends English and Spanish as Mamadora Eléctrica's feisty yet tender torch song snakes each tributary that has reduced Valentina's father to "a mummified bird." Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You resonates with a timbre similar to Joseph Cassara's The House of Impossible Beauties and Camila Sosa Villada's Bad Girls as it rushes forth from an inspired and extraordinary imagination. --Dave Wheeler, senior editor, Shelf Awareness