Leticia Martin‘s A New Noise (“Un ruido nuevo”) tells the story of modern family life, infidelity and the breakdown of marriage, with a metaphysical twist. Maria Lobo is the mother of three children, a wife, an advertising professional and a writer. She lives a comfortable middle-class life with her family in Buenos Aires. Her daily routine of transporting her children and going to work has recently been expanded to include visits to a creative writing guru and a psychoanalyst. Maria struggles to balance her authorial ambitions and her bad conscience about neglecting her children and her husband, Román. Her attempts to revive some passion with him fail. Then a romantic encounter with a colleague brings the problems to the surface in an explosive way, and her life begins to change rapidly. New Noise is a powerful and witty meditation on the tribulations of modern life from the perspective of a woman and her different roles. The metafictional element, combined with the fragmentary nature of the novel that reflects the protagonist‘s state of mind, is what makes the novel more than just a domestic drama. There is a wise irony in the way that the very conscious Maria tells her story, enriched by an excellent sense of comic timing, evident from the very first pages.

Martín struggles at home with his partner Cecilia: she is stubborn and self-centred. He diverts her with sex, and she uses the opportunity to make him pregnant. Estrógenos („Oestrogens“) plays in the future, in which the women refuse to give birth and men can get pregnant. Although Martín, at Cecilia’s insistence, has been undergoing hormone therapy for weeks, he feels surprised, but lets it happen. After the act, while his girlfriend gives a little cheer and then, as usual, takes a shower and goes to work, Martín buys a pregnancy test: Positive. He finds himself keeping silent at his workplace, for fear of degradation. It does not take long before a colleague, who has watched his protective hand movement over his belly, starts a rumour. After a short time his boss dismisses Martín on the pretext of a team restructuring. While he is still thinking about how to give the news to Cecilia, she tells him that she still feels much too young for family planning, and, by the way, has she met someone. She grabs her backpack and Martín remains alone, pregnant and unemployed. He looks for consolation in alcohol, and has an affair. While he is carrying on in a car park with his new flame, Greta, he is arrested. The government has decreed that every pregnant man must go to the nearest hospital without delay. Martín lives there like in a prison, while on the streets violent protests start. After his son is born, he finds a possibility to escape.The novel is brilliantly written and invariably captivates the reader. It can be read as a dystopia, but is astonishingly up-to-date in its sharp observations concerning the coexistence of men and women, technological development, and social order. What is the difference between the sexes today? Is everything desirable in terms of progress? What should be regulated by the state, and what reserved for privacy? Martín paints a gloomy picture without giving up hope. In the end, the father tells his son what happened, the circle of human life and tradition enters a new phase.