Set in Barcelona’s suburbs during Christmas, this anxiety-ridden novel follows Carmen, Alba, and Diana. Despite the ordinary holiday season, Alba mysteriously disappears at Splau, her local mall, two days before Christmas. Carmen and Diana experience excruciating pain in their bellies, resembling childbirth scars. As the wounds grow, they confront a sinister source of their affliction.
BEHIND THE BOOK: “I have spent more than twenty years of my life analyzing horror films and speaking and writing about them; also supporting, advising, and helping other writers and filmmakers to bring their horror, fantasy, and science fiction projects to life. I’ve written scripts for both film and television. At a certain point, I felt it was time to write my own stories. Or, rather, to write my own stories with the hope that others will read them, not just in private. My book is a blend of everything I’ve learned over the years, my love for fantasy and horror, and my need to use everything I know about those genres to tell a story that is deeply connected to my own life and to the lives of the women in my family. I also wanted to be part of a group of women creators I really admire who, through literature and film, have been showing in recent years that horror and fantasy are powerful genres for addressing the things that concern us all.” —Desirée de Fez
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Desirée de Fez is one of Europe’s foremost experts in fantasy and horror literature and film. Over the past fifteen years, she has worked with several influential independent film production companies and has advised Spanish, Latin American, and American producers and directors. Desirée is also a film critic, specializing in fantasy and horror cinema, and works as a programmer for an international film festival. Don’t Leave Her Alone is her debut novel.
Desirée de Fez
“A darkly enchanted expedition into the eviscerating oblivion of motherhood. de Fez writes with her sharpest knife.” —Rachel Yoder
“An eldritch Pedro Almodóvar nightmare” (Clay McLeod Chapman) that glitters in its feverish propulsion, following three mothers in the hushed suburbs of Barcelona, who are awakened by the monsters that live inside of them.
Alba has always clung to her mother, Carmen: to run errands or simply validate every anxiety she’s ever had. Yet nothing can silence the fears Alba refuses to confront. They simmer, then burst, but never quite erupt, and each time, Carmen is found at her side. Meanwhile, Alba’s sister, Diana, struggles herself, juggling the demands of motherhood and work, but cannot recall when Carmen last tended to her.
Two days before Christmas, Alba drags Carmen to the mall. There, she runs into the formidable “widows.” The pair approaches Alba and puts an evil eye on her. Her nose starts to bleed, which is how Alba knows. Then, on Christmas Eve, Alba disappears, and Diana and Carmen collapse from the pain in their bellies, where a deep gash splits their purging stomachs. As the tensions the three women have long held in explode, they’re finally forced to confront the terror that connects them.
Haunting, cinematic, and strikingly visceral, Don’t Leave Her Alone is an incisive exploration of motherhood that interrogates women’s struggle for autonomy and identity and ultimately forces the question: What does it finally take to break free?
Images and press release courtesy of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Penguin Random House
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