Ten Women by Marcela Serrano: book review

Ten Women (2014) is set in Santiago, Chile, in contemporary times. It is a collection of life stories about nine Chilean women.

Francisca, Mané, Juana, Simona, Layla, Luisa, Guadalupe, Andrea, and Ana Rosa—from nineteen to seventy-five years of age. Their lives seem so different—in age, background, race, and social status—yet they represent the universality of women.

One is a forty-two year old at a “complicated stage of life.” One lives with the help of three things: “drink, men, and the theatre.” One is a thirty-seven-year-old single working mother. The sixty-one year old is angry and the nineteen year old is confused. Celebrity, architect, carer, secretary, waxer, recluse, and journalist—the women describe their memories from childhood to the present day, where “the past is a safe refuge.”

Each story is narrated in person by the woman—as much as they want to reveal, or as little.

Some have routine lives, some have pets, some are married, some suffer losses, some want to be left alone, some have travelled far. Some experience heartbreak, others experience healing. From Paris to Minsk to Santiago, their lives converge in one day on the banks of the River Aconcagua.

One woman connects them together—the tenth woman, Natasha.

This is interesting, yet the lives told of each woman is brief and sparse. Commonalities are revealed, although with some ambiguity, with and without resolution.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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