Wendolin Kramer by Laura Fernández
Monday, November 12, 2012 at 8:30PM 
First published in Spain in 2011; published in translation by Barcelona eBooks on October 16, 2012
Wendolin Kramer frequently wears a Wondergirl costume (of sorts) and imagines herself as a superhero, a role for which she is not ideally suited. Nor is she a likely detective, although she advertises her services (using the name W. Kramer) and considers her bedroom to be her detective office. A potential client wants to hire Wen but believes W. Kramer is a man, forcing Wen to play the role of W. Kramer's secretary when she meets the client. Her adventures bring her into the literary world, where a blackmail scheme threatens to expose the truth about a revered writer.
Other significant characters include: Marvin Rodriguez, who runs a comic book store and has an abusive relationship with a life-size blowup doll named Mary Jane (Spiderman's girlfriend); Erlinda Largo, who has dedicated her feminist bookstore to a dead writer named Vendolin Woolfin; Francis Domino, a writer/detective/gigilo who intends to ruin publisher Roberta Glanton (who holds the publication rights to Woolfin's work) by telling a journalist the truth about Woolfin; Clay Gomez, a mediocre journalist and failed writer who must decide whether to publish the truth about Woolfin; and Donatelo Garcia, a canine psychiatrist.
The novel's most interesting character is a dog. Earl can't talk, but he maintains a running commentary on matters pertinent to dogs. Earl is unhappy that he has been forced to undergo psychoanalysis after an unfortunate incident with a poodle at a beauty contest. This would have been a better novel if Earl had been given a more central role.
Reduced to its essence, the story has merit. Fans of the absurd might like the novel more than I did, but for my taste the novel's bizarre nature is annoying. Like her mother, Wen occasionally speaks in German for no apparent reason. Different characters call Earl by different names. Laura Fernández can't mention anyone's name (Tarantino, Hitchcock, Kirk Cameron) without explaining in simplistic terms who that person is. That's supposed to be funny, I think, but it isn't.
At some points, the story is written as if it were a comic book, with parenthetical words like KOFF KOFF appearing when a character is coughing, just as you might see them in a comic (except in a comic they would probably be inked in red). Sentences regularly appear along the lines of: "It would blow their minds. BOOM." and "He scratched his chin (SKRITCH SKRITCH)." Reproducing comic book "sound effects" in that way is an interesting technique, but after awhile it becomes tedious.
There is a certain cleverness to the twisty plot. If the novel had been less absurd I would probably be able to work up some enthusiasm for it. Fernández has the potential to be an interesting storyteller. I'd like to see more of her work, but only if she omits the bothersome elements that mar this novel.
NOT RECOMMENDED