“Light Bodies,” Jennifer Down’s novel about the vulnerability of childhood

Australian short story writer Jennifer Down (1990) won the Miles Franklin Award last year in her home country for her second novel, light bodies (2021), which reached Spanish in the translation of Irene de la Torre. A young and unknown author, who nevertheless served a strong story, with Dickensian reminiscences if the reader was taken by the successive steps of Maggie Sullivan, the main girl, through residences for juveniles, foster homes and adoptive families. Except that Down’s view is imbued with emotional intelligence and intimacy, and full of immediacy and subtle distance, far from that of Victorian realism. Such a sad journey is told flashes, in a return triggered by an unexpected message that appeared on Holly’s Facebook – a new identity for a new life for Maggie, which helps her forget in her flight forward – and comes from the ominous mists of the past. Maggie comes to the first discovery of the world after the death of her mother and father mired in drugs. The intervention of social services starts a life built on helplessness, fear, sexual abuse — by caregivers, the police — and bad decisions. Even in situations of the greatest violence, the author performs with elliptical delicacy and language that captivates the reader. And so what could be accepted as a story seen a thousand times offers countless nuances. The reader might think, considering how natural the construction is, from the richness of its details, from the credibility of the character, from the current of sympathy it creates, that, if it did not convey a vast knowledge of the human soul, there is something autobiographical in this dramatic flood of fictional memory. And the truth is that in this survivor trying to overcome her trauma, there is a burden of insomnia and family conversations, since both Down parents work with vulnerable young people.