Dark, disturbing yet devastatingly beautiful. My third And other Stories subscription book and my favourite to date.

The remainder is a tale of three broken children, now all grown up, a city smothered in ash and the meanings and weights of language and words.

Felipe tells us his story in single sentences the length of chapters. He sees dead bodies everywhere and is slowly subtracting them down until he finds the remainder.

Iquela, an English language translator, is obsessed with Paloma, a child more of her parents past and memories than her own. I admit she made me a little obsessed with Paloma too.

Then one day a pisco (brandy) swilling, chain-smoking Paloma turns up in Chile to bury her mother Ingrid. Like a fairytale, ash falls on Santiago and the body gets diverted to Argentina. All three travel over the Cordillera and back into their pasts to retrieve the body.

This book is recommended to readers who love language, appreciate translators and who were not overly disturbed by violent imagery (if you didn’t mind Han Kang’s the Vegetarian you will probably be okay).

I should hate this book for the parrot scene alone (I own parakeets/budgies) but I love it.