Review of Time of the Flies by Claudio Piniero

*Time of the Flies* by Claudia Piñeiro, translated by Frances Riddle (2024). Published by Charco Press.

If you’re new here and found this blog through the mysterious powers of the Internet, welcome! My name is Ashley, and I’m a dedicated reader and movie watcher who thought to turn this website into a little digital archive of sorts.

I was watching and reading so much that I wanted to keep track of it all, so I began blogging as a way to keep these books as memories somewhat forever.

That said, I recently fell into a period of unemployment, and this blog was a solace for me. Not only was it a way to make a little bit of money when there was nothing else coming my way really, but I found, after getting my finances in order, that I enjoyed sitting down to write blog posts when I had nothing else to do in my day.

If you like this review in the end, feel free to click around. This is my digital home, so I’m happy to have you here. This blog post is probably coming out a few months after I wrote it due to the sheer nature of the backlog I have right now.

One of my goals lately, especially as I’m officially funemployed, is that I want to diversify the kinds of content I am consuming in my daily life. I specialize in East Asian literature and film, especially as my graduate degree specialized in Korean women’s literature, but I want to learn more about the world and its people.

So I’ve been intentionally picking out books from perspectives I don’t often consume. Whether it’s LGBTQ+ or African literature, I want to see more of the world and its diversity, so I give the book a chance even if the plot seems outside of my comfort zone. I’ve been reading some great books this way.

That’s how I ended up picking out Time of the Flies when I was at the local library. It was in the new fiction section, and when I saw the publisher specialized in Latin American literature and the synopsis of this book, I was sold. I wanted to read it.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much before you get bored; I know some introductions can be quite long.

Newly released from jail, an Argentine woman opens her cleaning business, but is asked to kill someone by a client.

Our main character in this novel is Ines. 15 years prior to the present day, she decided she needed to take action on her own and poisoned her husband’s lover. That got her quite a bit of jail time, and she learned quite a bit when she was sitting in her cell all of those years.

She also made a friend in a woman named Manca. When they both are released from prison, they decide to go into business together, and quite fittingly they go into pest control. Considering how she tried to poison her husband, it seems like the pest control aspect is suitable for these women.

They manage to build up a client roster and actually make some money with their business, but everything is about to change for the two women. Ines has a bit of a hatred for pests and is willing to exterminate them, especially flies, but one of their clients, named Señora Bonar, has a proposal for them.

She heard that these two were in jail, and she knows what Ines did to her husband’s lover. So she wants to hire the two women to take out a different kind of pest in her life: her own husband’s lover. While Ines is conflicted about this offer, it leads the two down a path where they have to confront their past and current reality.

They do end up picking the request up, but the novel really is about them confronting the trauma of what they went through as women, too. There is so much commentary packed into this little novel because of that, especially when we beginning switching perspectives. There are three distinct sections of this book, so we’re not just chained to Ines’ experiences and thoughts.

I found the writing style to be good, but it was not my type. I personally had trouble getting through this book because of the writing style and how it’s so deep inside of the character Ines’ head, but I could see how someone else would really like this book because of that.

It’s different than what I’m used to—that’s what I am trying to get at here. It’s not bad, but I found the novel trickier to read because of that, especially when we started getting more glimpse into the backstory that led them to this point.

Overall Thoughts

While I didn’t particularly enjoy the process of reading this novel, as I found it more difficult to get through, I thought it was quite the worthwhile journey of getting to this point. I want to learn more about Argentine literature as a whole because of this; different literary traditions, especially in Latin America, are my weak point.

I did find the book to be very interesting. The choice of the main characters being two women who went to jail, and how they’re on a bit of a redemption arc back in the real world, then sucked back into the same things that got them there, is pretty compelling. It shows a deeper insight into the society they live in, especially how it pertains to gender.

So I say give this book a chance if you come across it in the mean time. It’s certainly an interesting book, and it’s worth picking up at least once if you’re interested in its subject matter or plot.

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