A provocative new novel from the author ranked among Granta's "Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists" Globally acclaimed as a relentless innovator and a meticulous explorer of the psyche's most obscure alleyways, Elvira Navarro here delivers an ambitious tale of feminine friendship, madness, a radically changing city, and the vulnerability that makes us divulge our most shameful secrets. It begins as Elisa transcribes the chaotic testimony of her roommate Susana, acting as part-therapist, part-confessor as Susana reveals the gripping account of her strange sexual urges and the one man who can satisfy them. But is Susana telling the truth? And what to make of the story that follows, where Elisa considers her own life failures, blending her literary ambitions with her deep need for catharsis? And then, one last surprise makes us question everything we have just read. Masterfully uncovering the insecurity that lurks just beneath the surface of every stable life, A Working Woman shows Elvira Navarro's strength for mordant storytelling and breathtaking insight into alienation, confirming her status as one of the leading voices of her generation.
"A Working Woman invents a language and a structure to portray the outskirts of the city and job insecurity like no novel has done before. Elvira Navarro is one of the most intelligent and daring writers in the Spanish-speaking world."
Daniel Saldaña París, author of Among Strange Victims
"A Working Woman . . . interrogates the psyche of characters mired by the Spanish economic crisis and the realities and lies they build around themselves in search of catharsis."
Daniel Peña, Ploughshares
"Elvira Navarro is an enormously gifted and disturbing young writer with an unusual eye for the bizarre; she captures personal fragility with deceptively detached prose that stays with us like a scarring incision."
