The Week of Colors

Often cited as the true inventor of magical realism (which she rejected as a "cheap marketing label"), Elena Garro brings her characters--women and their maids, unsupervised children, the abused and dispossessed--to life with sharp dialogue and unparalleled imagination. A woman flits between two realities centuries apart, as violent scenes from the conquest of Mexico bleed their way into her comfortable contemporary life. Two little girls visit the home of a sorcerer who tortures women named after the days of the week. Girls become dogs, a laborer hides human bones in bricks he'll use to build a house, and an old woman shows up at an acquaintance's door one night with a knife and a bone-chilling confession. In The Week of Colors, Garro highlights the violence in our history, our homes, and our hearts, in vivid color.