Lost Children Archive

Luiselli has quickly built a reputation among American readers for her short novels and, especially, for Tell Me How It Ends, her short but blistering little book about working as a translator for Central American children looking for asylum in the unwelcoming U.S. Now she has gone big, with her first novel written in English, which at first reads as if she had taken the subject of Tell Me How and built a Rachel Cusk novel around it, an elegantly but indirectly told autofictional story of marital discontent. But as the book goes on, the layers of storytelling might make you think of Roberto Bolaño as well, as she uses the deceptively companionable story of a family on an American road trip to evoke the devastating truths of history and the very present day.