South of Centre — Andrea Carter

South of Centre is a saga that exposes the intertwined lives of an obsessive spinster who lives in a small town at the edge of Chile's Atacama Desert, and that of an exotic, elderly gentleman who returns there to die.Clorinda becomes obsessed with Sr. Ortega after she sees him move in across the street. When he finally befriends her, the unlikely story behind their relationship begins to unravel, taking us for a spin through the decades before and after Chile's dictatorship.Sr. Ortega, born a poor miner's son at the end of a long line of faded Spanish aristocracy, defies destiny at the age of 15. His single audacious impulse provokes a series of events that take him far beyond his dusty, coastal hometown, and back again.Dressed in her 'calendar wardrobe,' Clorinda recycles fibres from used garments to create beautiful tapestries. Obsessed as she is with Sr. Ortega, she picks through the threads of his life to weave his story into a bizarre work of art that can have only one fate.Full of quirky humor and tragic circumstances, South of Centre is sprinkled with magic realism. Its underlying questions cut through decades of change and bring us to a point of unexpected convergence.