An aspiring Colombian couple in Connecticut feel their marriage falling apart in this sharply observed novella Colombian novelist, essayist and short story writer Margarita García Robayo is well known across Latin America, and widely translated, though only one collection, Fish Soup, has been available in English. Now, Charco press has followed that with Charlotte Coombe’s translation of García Robayo’s 2017 novel Holiday Heart, a novella that dissects a failing marriage with surgical precision.After 19 years, Lucia and Pablo have stopped even “wondering why they’re still there, oozing indifference towards one another”. Then Pablo ends up in hospital with “holiday heart” – cardiovascular disease that often strikes around Christmas and new year, due to overindulging in rich food and booze. It’s not the only thing he’s been indulging in: Lucia is informed that Pablo was delivered to hospital by one of his students. She leaves their home in Connecticut to go to her parents’ holiday apartment in Miami, taking their twin children with her. Continue reading...