#RivetingReviews: West Camel reviews THE FAMILY by Sara Mesa, translated by Katie Whittemore

Time does not travel in a straight line in Sara Mesa’s masterful new novel (in masterful English translation by Katie Whittemore). Yes, we begin shortly after Martina – niece to Laura, the titular family’s mother – is adopted into the family after the deaths of her own mother and grandmother; and yes, we end (but not quite) with the adult Martina stranded in an airport as she tries to get home from the funeral of one of the family. But between these two points, the key scenes and moments from the family members’ lives are visited, not at random, but out of any clear chronological order, and without any date labels or indication of how many years have passed or have been scrolled back.

There is intention in this structure, however. We are being presented with the family not as a social unit, and not as a saga, a history that moves from generation to generation, but as a set of overlapping experiences and narratives, of interacting personalities and values.

A key value that pervades this family and guides so much of the book’s action is charity. The father, Damián, a quiet, superficially gentle tyrant, who is ultimately revealed as a Spanish Walter Mitty, is a great proponent of charity. He is involved with a rather shadowy group, known only as ‘the organization’, which collects money for sick children. When Martina points out that he has no sick children himself he:

‘wiped his lips neatly on a napkin and explained that one need not be personally affected by a cause to be involved with it; in fact, he said, the purest fight, the most genuine and admirable, is the fight a person takes on with no expectation of personal benefit, the cause a person embraces on behalf of others.’

The father’s tyranny in this regard is effective. We see all four of his children motivated by charitable feelings. Rosa, the oldest sister, despite always being ‘in some sort of trouble’ as an adult, such as kleptomania and losing custody of her child, acts out of great charity when a local drunk collapses on the street and dies, seeking out his family, organising his funeral and taking in his dog.

And Martina, at the end of the book, thrown into the company of a fellow stranded traveller, a lost-seeming bear of man she dubs Boo Boo, has great compassion for him when he misinterprets her friendliness for personal attraction. Boo Boo has recently met Martina’s uncle Damián, who has given him legal advice. In return for disappointing Boo Boo’s amorous hopes, Martina tells him: ‘You shouldn’t take any of the advice my uncle gave you … He isn’t a lawyer – he said he was? Because he’s not.’

And here we see Mesa exploring the deeper effects that ‘family values’ have. Martina has no illusions about her uncle:

‘That old man, her uncle … had been offering baseless advice to the poor man before her, confusing him with his negligence and vanity, out of sheer force of habit. All to what end? None. Or at least none in her power to define.’

Damián’s charity, along with so many of the other ideals and standards he forces upon his family, is polluted by his frangible self-regard. And while Mesa eschews a chronological straight line in this novel, she offers one in the careful revelation to the reader of this truth. We discover at the novel’s close, however, that the members of the family have been aware of their father’s weakness from the start – and this awareness recolours and reshapes the picture of the family Mesa has painted. Through a crack in a wardrobe door, the children witnessed Damián during a private and painful moment of vulnerability:

‘We were very young, really very young. I remember our reflection in the imperial-style mirror – the reflection of the closet, that is, and the crack, and what was behind it, which was us – a mirror that swiftly disappeared from our family history because someone donated it to a charity auction’.

Subtle and wrongfooting, questioning and compassionate, The Family adds to Mesa’s roster of acute and penetrating explorations of the human condition, and sees her, and her translator, working under full power.

Reviewed by West Camel

THE FAMILY

Written by Sara Mesa

Translated by Katie Whittemore

Published by Peirene Press (2026)

June 2026 #RivetingReviews titles are available to buy from bookshop.org.

West Camel is a writer, reviewer and editor. He edited Dalkey Archive’s Best European Fiction 2015 and has written two novels, Attend and Fall. He is the editor of The Riveter magazine and helps edit the #RivetingReviews for the European Literature Network. He is currently taking a sabbatical from his role as editorial director at Orenda Books to write his third novel.

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