Like Ari­ana Harwicz’s pre­vi­ous works, Unfit, the lat­est nov­el by the prizewin­ning Argen­tine author (trans­lat­ed from the Span­ish by Jessie Mendez Say­er), dives deep into the mind of its pro­tag­o­nist and refus­es to give easy answers to the dilem­mas it poses.

Unfit is nar­rat­ed by Lisa, a moth­er who has lost cus­tody of her twin sons, J and E; the chil­dren have been sent to live with her ex-hus­band, Armand, and his par­ents. The ulti­mate out­sider — an immi­grant to France, a Jew in a tra­di­tion­al­ly Chris­t­ian rur­al town, and now, a divor­cée try­ing to make ends meet — Lisa will not stop at any­thing to attempt to reclaim them.

Tor­tured by her sti­fling month­ly vis­its, dur­ing which Armand chainsmokes in the cor­ner and the social work­er takes notes of every­thing she’s doing wrong, Lisa attempts to over­turn the court’s deci­sion. But can she even fight a sys­tem that seems rigged against her, the result of gen­er­a­tions of racism and injus­tice, and a soci­ety that puts impos­si­ble demands on women? This can be seen in the almost com­i­cal advice from her state-appoint­ed lawyer: avoid ani­mal prints, wear a light-col­ored blouse and fem­i­nine or plain shoes, don’t lean so far for­wards, take off any chains, even the del­i­cate ones, work on soft­en­ing your expres­sions and ges­tures. The fact that these are not indica­tive of moth­er­ly behav­iors but mere ​“virtue sig­nal­ing” does not seem to both­er any­one, includ­ing the lawyer, who sum­ma­rizes the rules of the game: ​“Num­ber 1: Do not come across as too mas­cu­line because you won’t seem mater­nal enough. Num­ber 2: Do not come across as too fem­i­nine, to avoid sug­gest­ing a pro­nounced incli­na­tion towards sex or obscenity.”

The book asks dif­fi­cult ques­tions about mater­nal love, domes­tic vio­lence, and the norms that gov­ern our soci­ety. Is the sys­tem tru­ly rigged against her? Do the vil­lagers that tes­ti­fied against her have the best inter­ests of J and E in mind, or are their actions fueled by xeno­pho­bia? Is Lisa dri­ven by moth­er­ly love and a sense of sac­ri­fice, or is she prov­ing her detrac­tors right by stalk­ing her chil­dren, hid­ing in trees to observe them out­side their school, or dis­guis­ing her­self in the pub­lic pool to be near them? Since the sto­ry is told exclu­sive­ly through the inner mono­logue of the pro­tag­o­nist, with­out an exter­nal account that would pro­vide an unfil­tered alter­na­tive, the read­er must con­stant­ly con­sid­er oth­er points of view, rec­on­cil­ing ele­ments of both vic­tim­hood and cul­pa­bil­i­ty that Lisa exhibits.

Har­witz’s style mir­rors Lisa’s frac­tured psy­chol­o­gy. There is a sharp­ness, an urgency to the sen­tences. Even the typog­ra­phy of the book is tight, breath­less. Thoughts cas­cade with­out tra­di­tion­al struc­ture, and quo­ta­tion marks don’t exist, cast­ing a doubt on the accu­ra­cy and rep­re­sen­ta­tion of what is said by oth­ers. The bound­ary between real­i­ty and per­cep­tion con­stant­ly shifts. The read­er does not mere­ly observe Lisa’s break­down but expe­ri­ences it from the inside. 

Through frag­ment­ed back­sto­ry, the read­er learns that Lisa and Armand’s rela­tion­ship was mutu­al­ly vio­lent — stran­gling match­es, pas­sion­ate rec­on­cil­i­a­tions, and a tox­ic depen­dence that nei­ther could escape. The fam­i­ly’s antag­o­nism toward Lisa, dri­ven by anti­semitism, fur­ther com­pli­cates the pic­ture. And so, with each esca­la­tion in the plot, the read­er con­tin­ues to ask: Is Lisa a vic­tim of insti­tu­tion­al bias, or is she gen­uine­ly dan­ger­ous? Per­haps the biggest tri­umph of Harwicz’s nov­el is to give such depth to her flawed hero­ine that the read­er feels her des­per­a­tion. While one can con­tin­ue to debate her fit­ness as a moth­er, Lisa’s actions, how­ev­er shock­ing, ring true. 

In this short, cap­ti­vat­ing read, Har­wicz offers no res­o­lu­tion, no redemp­tion, no com­fort. Read­ers, how­ev­er, are reward­ed by a work that doesn’t flinch from wrestling with dif­fi­cult ques­tions, includ­ing whether there is a clear bor­der where love and devo­tion end, and obses­sion and destruc­tion begin.