During the short-story-a-day challenge, I also found myself drawn for the first time to an incredible Mexican writer, Guadalupe Nettel. I was seduced by the five short stories in her collection, Natural Histories (translated by JT Lichtenstein). One of the stories that stands out in my memory is ‘Fungus’. Perhaps because it deals with a particularly unsettling topic for a short story. It begins: “When I was a little girl, my mother had a fungus on one of her toenails…” We go on to discover that the protagonist has an incurable fungus of her own, caught from a lover, which she cultivates compulsively, as a way to maintain a connection with a failed love affair. “Parasites – I understand this now – we are unsatisfied beings by nature. Neither the nourishment nor the attention we receive will ever be enough. The secrecy that ensures our survival often frustrates us.” I’ve since read Nettel’s work in Granta, and she has a new novel (her fourth) out in August 2022, called Still Born (translated by Rosalind Harvey), which deals with themes of maternal ambivalence.

First published in Natural Histories, Seven Stories Press, 2013