I swallowed this book in just a few days. It’s such a disturbing and sad story.

“Elena Knows” by Claudia Piñeiro is a short novel, but it carries a heavy emotional weight. It’s a story about incurable illness, grief, and the painful realization that the people we love most might still be strangers to us.

We follow Elena, an elderly woman suffering from Parkinson’s disease, whose days are ruled by pills and the slow betrayal of her own body, while she’s making her stubborn way towards a person she hasn’t seen for 20 years — someone she believes owes her a debt and will help her uncover the truth. Elena’s mind is preoccupied with the mission to find out what really happened to her daughter Rita.

Everyone says she took her own life after they found her hanging from the church bell tower. But Elena refuses to believe it. She’s sure someone killed her daughter. Her reasoning is heartbreakingly simple: Rita was terrified of churches during storms, afraid of being struck by lightning. “She would never go there,” Elena insists. Faith in this fact keeps her moving through the city and through memories that reveal just how complicated her relationship with her daughter truly was.

The narrative moves between past and present, and all of it is recalled from Elena’s memory. We see Rita as a little girl, as a young woman, some moments that shaped their relationship, and Elena’s way through her illness.

Elena isn’t perfect. She’s naive, she’s narrow-minded at times, and simple, but she’s also so lonely it is heartbreaking.

This is one of those rare novels that feels small in size but vast in meaning, like “Small Things Like These” by Claire Keegan. Highly recommend “Elena Knows” if you’re in the mood for something emotional and quietly devastating. It’s a quiet book, but it hits deep and stays with you longer than you expect.