The Anthill

March 1, 2020
After a 20-year absence, Lina returns to Medell�n in search of the authenticity of her childhood. In a city busy rebuilding itself from the ruins of conflict, what she finds is nothing as simple as atonement. For decades, Medell�n, Colombia, had one of the highest murder rates in the world. Caught at the epicenter of the conflict between FARC guerilla forces, the government-backed paramilitary, and Pablo Escobar's narco crime wave, the city was so dangerous that citizens were effectively under siege in their own homes and under active attack in the streets. Yet this is also the city Lina called home for the first eight years of her life, until her mother's violent death, and the place to which she returns when she finds herself adrift at the end of her Ph.D. program in London. Lina seeks out her closest childhood friend, Matt�as, with a vague plan of volunteering at the community center he runs in a desperately poor neighborhood. Lina struggles to reconcile her muddled memories of her friend Matty with the intense, edgy Matt�as she now meets, but even as the pressure of the childhood secret she keeps begins to overwhelm her, strange occurrences at the Anthill start to mount. Is the sharp-toothed, gray-skinned boy the children see hanging around just another of Medell�n's forgotten street children, or is he something more sinister? Where does Matt�as go during his long absences, and what happened to him in the years Lina was gone? Finally, in coming back to Colombia, is Lina doing a service to her city and to the memory of her past life, or is her very presence opening the wounds that have just begun to heal? Pachico's (The Lucky Ones, 2017) second book continues to assert the young author's mastery of her chosen landscape. The tension between the residents of Pachico's vibrant and tormented Medell�n and the mission groups, professional volunteers, and poverty tourists is palpable and gets to the heart of one of the area's primary dilemmas--how to build on a past which cannot be spoken and yet will not be erased. The insertion of a supernatural element in the novel is distracting, however, and too overt a metaphor for the paradoxes more skillfully and subtly asserted by Pachico's pitch-perfect rendering of Medell�n's many voices as they seek to reconcile their pasts with their futures. A jarring book that thrives on its many contradictions.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 23, 2020
At the start of Pachico’s uneven sophomore effort (after The Lucky Ones), 28-year-old half-Colombian and half-British Maria “Lina” Carolina returns to her birthplace of Medellín, Colombia, for the first time in 20 years. Anxious and aimless, she has left behind a foundering academic career in England to volunteer at The Anthill, a school founded by Mattías (“Matty”), whom Lina’s mother had raised with Lina in Colombia. After a disarming initial reunion with Matty, who is scarred and embittered by his experiences in the city when it was more dangerous (“You won’t be able to recognise who was once a guerilla or who was once a paramilitary,” he tells her), Lina makes friends with the school’s other volunteers and grows close to the children. However, as Matty tells the other volunteers a different version of his childhood story from the one Lina remembers, Lina is disturbed by the children’s sightings of a strange, dirty boy who vanishes whenever Lina turns to look at him. While plot inconsistencies, underdeveloped characters, and awkward second-person narration lessen the narrative’s emotional impact, Pachico navigates issues of class, war, and violence with intelligence and grace. This lopsided tale falls somewhere between literary fiction and commercial mystery without quite finding its footing.

June 5, 2020

In her second work of fiction, Pachico revisits Colombia, her homeland and the setting of her debut novel, The Lucky Ones. Half-Colombian, half-British, Maria Carolina (Lina) has returned to Medell�n 20 years after her family fled to England to escape the terror wreaked by narcotraffickers, right-wing paramilitary organizations, and left-wing guerrilla groups. Lina seeks to connect with Mattias (Matty), who was reared alongside Lina before her family's abrupt departure. The distant and mysterious Matty has established the Anthill, a refuge and daycare center for the city's impoverished population, mostly children. At first a reluctant volunteer, Lina becomes familiar with the center's operations and joins other volunteer tourists intent on combating the enduring effects of child abuse, gang pressures, drug trafficking, and violence against women. But her childhood still haunts her, complicated as it is by her privilege and race. Pachico obfuscates its rendering through Lina's surreal memories, which are often at odds with Matty's--to the point of creating tension between the two. Yet her richly drawn dreams add depth to the dark possibilities of her and Matty's past, and the ghost boy lurking just outside the periphery of her vision heightens the mystery and drama. VERDICT Though occasionally disjointed, this novel offers a unique exploration of trauma and loss and how they shape both personal and national identities.--Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.