Book 72, Country 78 - Guatemala

Lies – Enrique de Heriz – translated from Spanish and first published in the UK in 2007

A woman dies in a boat accident in a remote part of the Guatemalan jungle.  She is wrongly identified as Spanish anthropologist Isabel Garcia Luna.  When Isabel finds out that her husband and children think she is dead, she decides not to say anything for a while.  Meanwhile back in Malespina in Spain her daughter Serena is obsessed with disentangling the truth from all the lies she has been told about the life and death of her grandfather Simon.  I felt the story could have been told in a more succinct way and there is rather too much introspection for my liking.  However it is an unusual plot and has some interesting details about death customs and rituals and cannibalism in remote tribes around the world.  6/10

10th June 2012