Sobre huéspedes y sus relaciones: el cuerpo y la ciudad en El huésped, de Guadalupe Nettel

Abstract

In this article I present a brief analysis of the first novel by the Mexican writer Guadalupe Nettel, El huésped, published in 2006. The text is part of my current research project that deals with the relationship between the city and literature in Latin American context. Nettel's novels frequently address relationships with strange or foreign elements that distort the relation with the body, these relationships are often pierced by ways of perceiving space and / or the city. In the case of her first novel, the city is present in an intense way. This novel deals with a tense connection between the narrating protagonist and a “creature” that lives inside her, named by herself as “La Cosa”. If there is something disconcerting in the idea of a being that takes her body, on the other hand there exists, in that possession by the unwanted guest, a mark of affirmation of a feminine identity independent of the patterns, in the same way that the city by that Ana circulates reveals more than its foreseeable surface.