The Delivery

The Delivery | By Margarita Garcia Robayo | Translated by Megan McDowell

In The Delivery, an enormous package arrives that can't be opened, Agatha the cat appears and disappears, half-finished buildings punctuate the horizon-semi-ordinary happenings that take on an otherworldly cast if you look at them sideways. And nothing is stranger, in this high rise apartment far from home, than the tenuous bonds of family that hold us together, or don't.

The narrator works, zooms with her sister, makes plans for the future (a writing residency, a child), and tentatively probes her past, while subtle fissures open up around her, changing her life forever. As she says about her childhood home, "Sometimes I get curious...but I don't ask, because the answer could come with information I'd rather not know."

By turns tender and biting, this is Robayo's finest work yet.