Summary

Chapter 9, “Broken Water,” is the first chapter in the novel to focus extensively on Malena, as she travels away from Montevideo while recalling her traumatic past. She recalls kissing her neighbor, Belén, as a 14-year-old, and then her silent boat trip with her mother to Buenos Aires. In the present day, Malena goes to a hotel on the outskirts of Montevideo, and ponders how she has somehow felt lonelier since the liberation. She has sex with a random man that she feels pity but not arousal for. Malena recalls how, in the clinic, she was given brutal electroshocks. A nurse confides in her, saying she wants to help Malena escape before the doctor, a literal former Nazi named Dr. Vaernet, gives her a lobotomy.

In the present day, Malena travels to a small town named Treinta y Tres, where she believes that...