In keeping with the style mentioned with regard to the last Colombian novel read, The Children employs a discourse which meanders as much as it flows, and is peppered with detours and dead ends. The story of Laura, a woman from Bogota who has a private rental income but nevertheless, to keep herself busy, works as an occasional cleaning woman. One day a boy appears outside her house and her life changes, as she first sends him to social services after taking him in, then seeks to locate him within the bureaucratic maze of the social services, then finds him, starts to take him out and about and ends up adopting him. However, the statement of the bald facts does no justice to the circuitous nature of the novel, which adopts a disinterested observational tone, as though the writer is a scientist looking at strange amoeba as they misshape and reform under the gaze of her microscope.
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