Review: Empty Houses by Brenda Navarro

When a mother loses her child, does she stop being a mother? When a woman finds a child, does she become a mother?

This is the premise of Empty Houses (Casas Vacías), by Mexican writer Brenda Navarro. In an intense storytelling style where we only know inner narration thanks to two characters, every preconception we may have about motherhood is thrown out the window. 

The book took the Mexican publishing world by storm, especially because it’s Navarro’s first novel. It first became available for free online in 2018 with the work of digital magazine and editorial house Kaja Negra.

It became a hit, with the digital edition being passed around amongst book lovers. In 2019 it found a new publishing house, Sexto Piso, and it went mainstream, being dubbed one of the best Mexican books of the decade.

The book is now ready for its publication in the English-speaking world in 2021 with Daunt Books Publishing. It was translated by Sophie Hughes, who was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize with Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor.

Motherhood is pain

Motherhood is one of the most sacred things a woman can do, at least culturally. The figure of the mother is universally regarded as a kind of saint who gives up her body and whole life so that each and every one of us gets to live. 

Empty Houses tells the story of two mothers, one who loses her child, and the one who finds him. 

So when Navarro begins her critically acclaimed novel with the pain a mother feels for losing her 3-year-old child in the park, we instantly empathize with her pain. And then, as we read and read her inner monologue everything gets complicated. 

Then we meet another woman, one who longs to be a mother, one who is in an abusive relationship and belongs to a marginalized part of the city. She finds a child and believes it is her destiny to become his mother.

And I refer to them as mother or woman, because we never actually know their names. We know their thoughts, their feelings, their guilts, their fears, the way violence comes into their lives, in different manners, but just as violent.

The only moments when we are not in their minds is at the beginning of every chapter, where we find poems by polish poet and Nobel winner Wisława Szymborska about motherhood. Just as a taste of the spirit of the novel, and an introduction to Szymborska’s work, here is one of the poems we find in Empty Houses:

"Woman, what's your name?" "I don't know."

"How old are you? Where are you from?" "I don't know."

Why did you dig that burrow?" "I don't know."

"How long have you been hiding?" "I don't know."

"Why did you bite my finger?" "I don't know."

"Don't you know that we won't hurt you?" "I don't know."

"Whose side are you on?" "I don't know."

"This is war, you've got to choose." "I don't know."

"Does your village still exist?" "I don't know."

"Are those your children?" "Yes."

A Mexican nightmare

For Mexicans, the story is especially poignant because of the history of missing people that have intensified in the last 15 years in the country. It is believed that we have at least 33,000 people missing because of the war on drugs, and who knows how many common pits there are in the country. 

So Mexico is in itself a country full of “Casas Vacías,” a country full of mothers who search for their children (there are more than 40 groups of organized mothers searching for their sons and daughters). They search for the right to be with their children, even if it’s their remains.

Navarro not only refers to the subject of missing children and broken families but also to the issue of feminicidios (femicides). In Mexico, there are 10 femicides each day, according to official data. 

One of the characters in the book is the daughter of a woman killed by her husband, and even though we never hear her inner voice, she is one more in the engrained and non-stop violence which makes women just a vessel of pain and renders them invisible.

Navarro seems to have a deep understanding of grief, of pain and violence, and the way they reverberate across generations and relationships in ways that we can’t control, and in ways that define us and those around us in an infinite loop.

Mexican author Yuri Herrera referred to the book as “a study in pain.” I would like to add it’s a study in empathy.

This is a devastating novel, that reads fast and when those last lines hit you, it becomes a part of you.