A Week in October

by Elizabeth Subercaseaux

A mystery novel where the heart is the culprit and the reader is the detective sleuthing for two truths‚ the story‚ s and their own

A Week in October is a thriller for those of us who usually prefer a good love story that you just can‚ t put down. In other words it is a thriller-of-the-heart, where the spirit of "dangerous liaisons" is set against the all too familiar and difficult background of breast cancer. The beautiful...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 159051288X
• ISBN13: 9781590512883
• Release Date: August 2008
• Publisher: Other Press (NY)
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.1" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A Haunting Tone Poem

A Week In October reads more like a tone poem than a novel. Subercaseaux is masterful at sustaining a mood of increasing darkness laced with mordant humor, occasioned by her heroine's discovery that she has breast cancer and is certain to die. The book is starkly truthful in its portrayal of a loveless marriage that endures because of the inertia of the two partners. Its portrait of the husband is brutal, unsparing. But the main focus is Clara, who goes off on a sexual adventure after she has been given her death sentence. Or does she? We can't be sure. Or at least her husband Clemente can't, and we begin to identify with his increasingly uneasy horror as he secretly reads the diary she may have written so he would read it. Clara writes about her life in a manner that is both deeply emotional and dispassionately truthful--or so it seems. This is a book you won't forget because it bores its way into your soul and makes your life a little different than it was. A masterpiece by a Chilean writer whose other works need to be translated into English.

The truth will out

Chilean born Subercaseaux has crafted what feels like a delightfully old fashioned novel set in modern times. The formality and reserve of it makes a stark comparison to much of today's writing--and a wonderful change of pace. Clara Griffin is married to a successful but distant man--their marriage has grown stale at the very least. Then she discovers that she has cancer, and she feels the need to say things too long unsaid in the gentlest way possible--she writes a "novel" in a notebook, kept in a drawer where it seems that her husband is most likely to find it. Much of this book shows us the dance between these two people as one reveals veiled truths and the other has to absorb them without admitting he's been reading them. Truth is a fluid thing in this book--there's some "he said-she said", but the rest is indefinable to the very end. I found it to be a very interesting read

A heartfelt thriller

A Week in October is at heart a suspense novel. The beautiful wife of a coldly successful Chilean architect is stricken with breast cancer. Her husband suggests she consider keeping a journal to better deal with her illness. He happens upon her poorly concealed recollections (imaginings?) and can not help but read them. What he discovers is a veiled, and not entirely accurate, portrait of their life together. He is portrayed as a pompous philandering bore and she is a virtual stranger. The novel is structured so that one chapter is a journal entry and the next is the husband's response to the prior chapter. The author does a masterful job of building suspense as each chapter peels back another layer of the facade these two have erected. The conclusion of the novel will not be satisfactory to everyone, but, if you are paying attention, you will be warned . . .