The Brooklyn Rail

Each page of María Medem’s Land of Mirrors is saturated in bright full bleed color, making the edges of the book appear to be candy striped. In skies awash with pink lemonade gradients and grenadine tinted sunsets, Medem immerses the reader into a landscape of dreams, humming with vivid colors and snippets of sound. It’s fitting that the physical object of the book draws out this nostalgia, a long-forgotten flavor and sweetness, as it echoes the journey of our heroine, Antonia, as she ventures beyond the empty deserted town she calls home in search of something she can’t quite put into words.

Antonia lives alone, in the company of stray dogs and the occasional lemon-skinned lizard that darts out of the panel until just a sliver of its skinny tail can be seen. Though she doesn’t reveal how she came to live in this abandoned place, she hints at some distant life, before this one: “Sometimes I think I could even grow to like it, if it weren’t for this worry and the memories,” she thinks as she climbs up a steep tower to ring the bells—for whom, we don’t know. The sound rings out and she notices, “Filled with bells, the air smells different.” This synesthetic attention to memory, to the sounds and smells of nostalgia, can be read as a thematic throughline of the book, guiding both the reader and Antonia toward the Land of Mirrors. With exacting lines and methodical paneling, Medem captures gesture to an almost instructional degree: when we see a character showing another how to imitate the dove’s call with cupped palms, the motion is broken down step-by-step, as if we might follow along, bringing our hands to our mouths. “The doves sing like they used to, that’s why they always bring me back.”

The plot of the book is deceptively simple, yet hard to pin down, like a shadow that shifts and changes with the light. The text, translated from Spanish by Aleshia Jensen and Daniela Ortiz, is similarly spare, but poetic and resonant, like the flamenco lyrics that float in and out of the story. Antonia rings the bells and tends to a mysterious flower which may or may not be an extension of herself. Maybe the flower is a metaphor for Antonia’s interior self, some secret and deep core of her being, but maybe not: “I realized the flower was in tune with me. That my breathing was her breathing.” Antonia’s attachment to the flower grows, eventually turning into worry, “And my flower and her scent? What will become of her?”

One day, she meets a traveler, Manuela, who is passing through, “collecting sounds.” On a striking page, Antonia’s initial fear of this stranger, after being isolated for such a long time, is anthropomorphized as a rabbit, starkly white against the book’s popsicle-toned palette. “An urgent feeling. Where can I hide?” On the next page, a panel zooms in on the rabbit’s cherry-red eye when Manuela extends a gentle hand to nudge Antonia. Eventually, Manuela and Antonia become friends, sharing meals and songs together. As they sit by the fire, Manuela asks Antonia, “So tell me…you’ve never thought of leaving?” Antonia demurs, “Who’d look after all this?” Manuela says, “After all what?” The flower looms behind Antonia’s head as she explains that she needs to take care of the dogs and the bells, ashamed of her secret keeping but too fearful of Manuela’s judgement to tell her about the flower.

Eventually Manuela convinces Antonia to come with her to the Land of Mirrors, and soon the women, one a seasoned traveler, and the other someone who has been alone and rooted in place for a long time, embark toward this enigmatic land of silvery reflection.

What follows is a colorful mythical quest, complete with a hedge maze, berries that make you drunk, and when they reach the Land of Mirrors, both the imagery and narrative become even more surreal and dreamy, unspooling into an almost hallucinogenic quality. Panels shrink and become crowded with pink-faced revelers, drinking, dancing, and embracing. Antonia wakes, groggy and disoriented in this new place, with all its reflective surfaces. An apricot-toned hand rests on the haunch of a lavender greyhound. Over eight panels spread across two pages, a sun rises and falls, reflected in a tall arched mirror, the sky changing from peach dawn to plummy night.

In her acknowledgements, Medem thanks flamenco artists “for so much beauty, pain, and playfulness.” On the opposite page, the flamenco lyrics that appear throughout the book are printed in both Spanish and English. When I asked Medem about the significance of flamenco to the book she said, “I don't have a visual memory, I'm unable to remember images, so my memory works with sounds, smells, and somehow sensations and atmospheres, and although I use images for my work, I'm very interested in suggesting all these other feelings that aren't visible.”

Land of Mirrors is an elusive book, one that deliberately leaves itself open to interpretation, inviting the reader to peer into Antonia’s journey like a mirror. Medem’s sumptuous visual language illustrates and animates the sensuality of memory. The result is a reading experience steeped in the feelings of yearning and nostalgia. Antonia seems to ask us to take note of how we access our own memories through sounds and offers us the possibility of a loving departure from the past, showing us how to let go and leave the places we’ve outgrown.