Romina Paula in the mountains of Córdoba

If actress, playwright, and writer Romina Paula 's previous novels could be thought of as a sort of involuntary trilogy, "Hija Biográfica" can be read as a fold and a mise-en-abyme. Here she returns to the first-person narrative, but with a difference: the speaker is Leonor, a teenager adopted by Leticia, an actress and traveler who, in a sort of monologue, recounts the life of the person she constructs as her mother. At the same time, she questions her biological mother and herself. This voice—interspersed with the landscape of the Córdoba mountains—forms an experiment in the author's own language, constructing a distance almost typical of Brecht's theater to generate critical reflection in the reader.

What's remarkable is that, in this narrative device, the focus is not so much on the mother (the supposed subject of this "biography"), but on the gaze—loving, conflicted, sometimes ironic—of the daughter who narrates. This choice produces an interesting shift. The question that looms is this: how do you tell a story about a mother without turning her into a character? How can you avoid betraying her opacity, her mystery?

The author of ¿Vos me querés a mí? (Do You Love Me?), Agosto (August) , and Acá (Here) still has her usual ingredients: a subtle and delicate treatment of oral tradition, sensory descriptions that are almost prose poetry, glimpses of pop culture—songs from No Te Va Gustar (You'll Never Gustar), recreations of the film Mi primer beso (My First Kiss )—and a constant investigation into broken family ties. At the same time, an existential question about the feminine runs through the 203 pages to their very roots.

Beyond the distance, emotion is not absent. The author experiments with a somewhat more complex, overflowing, and less pruned language than in her previous work to give voice to a new way of narrating that borders on her own universe. What is added in this new first person?

There's a distinctly testimonial tone, as she also uses indirect style to tell the story of another: Leticia, the mother she never knew and longs to discover; her newborn little sister, Jacinta; and her close friend Camila Aluminé, who at times becomes an invitation to sexual exploration. The approach is somewhat Russian: small stories give life to an even larger one. A kind of constellation that questions existential dilemmas. Leonor states in one passage: "It's incredible how much I still need to know."

This novel can also be read from the perspective of how the changes a woman goes through are narrated—something present in her previous work, approached from another point in her life—but not from a pamphlet perspective but rather from a perspective of curiosity: her first menstruation that doesn't arrive, her desire to have many boyfriends.

This biographical novel is largely a story about the search for one's own identity. Another key feature is the adventure novel's tone. The characters don't stay still. Quite the contrary, they dry themselves in the sun on the hot stones on the riverbanks or go on an excursion to Iruya. Narrative excursions that refer to both the everyday and the transcendent.

It's impossible not to build bridges between the actress mother narrated by her biographical daughter in this novel and the biography of Romina Paula herself. However, beyond the obsession of the most curious reader, such an investigation is a dead end. The vitality of her prose lies in the fact that each image may bear some resemblance to reality, but, like snowflakes, each has its own unique pattern of beauty.

Biographical Daughter , Romina Paula. Entropy, 203 pages.