Graciela María Ferreira – or “Grachu” to her loved ones – is late with the rent again, and she needs the money now. Unfortunately, she’s spent her last dollars on a plush couch and her landlord is waiting on her doorstep. Grachu isn’t always a believer but today “she needs God to find her a new job”.
So begins Hailstones Fell Without Rain – Natalia Figueroa Barroso’s debut, and the second published novel by a Uruguayan-Australian writer.
The novel opens in Sydney’s Fairfield, where “families tug at their children in a musicality of languages: Vamos! Yalla! đi nào!”. It’s a world alive with rhythm and colour, and the syncopation of the streets seems to shape the book’s very form. With Grachu’s life at its centre, the novel jumps between western Sydney and Uruguay, past and present, tracking the shifting relationships between Grachu, her oldest daughter, Rita, and her Aunt Chula, and the challenges and joys that have shaped their lives.
We first meet Grachu in middle age, a migrant and struggling single mother determined to hold things together for herself and her three daughters. In the second of the novel’s three parts, narrated by Chula, we meet Grachu as a baby in Uruguay, born under the shadow of a civic-military dictatorship (1973–1985).
The novel traces the long aftershocks of colonisation, state control and migration. It grapples with the cruelty of oppression, the exhausting calculations that poverty requires and the necessity – and cost – of resilience and resistance. It is clear that survival is a political act and Figueroa Barroso’s political and emotional insight shines through in the details.
Yet, even as Hailstones explores these realities, it refuses to be consumed by them. Instead, it asks “Isn’t joy a form of resistance?” It offers an unflinching look at what gets passed on – grief, trauma and pain – but it also celebrates the inverse of these experiences: resilience, healing and love.
The book’s geographic and emotional range is expansive but at its heart are the indomitable spirits of the Ferreira women, who come flying at life “like arrows in a quiver waiting to be nocked, drawn and fired”.
The book is strikingly unsentimental. Grachu is loving, impulsive, funny and deeply flawed. She sabotages herself as often as she uplifts others. Her relationships are marred by misunderstanding, loss, confusion and distance. Yet across these ruptures, love persists. Hailstones is, among many things, a celebration of matrilineal connection; the bond between Grachu, Rita and Chula is marked by fierce loyalty that endures despite their challenges.
Stylistically, the novel is eclectic and exuberant – sometimes dizzyingly so. Figueroa Barroso’s prose pulses with life, blending Spanish-language lyricism and accented vowels with the staccato beat of western Sydney slang. It doesn’t pause to explain itself; like the world it represents, the novel code-switches constantly, folding Spanish into English and history into the present with unselfconscious ease. Figueroa Barroso’s vibrant literary voice echoes diverse influences, from the intergenerational structure used by Latin-American writers such as Isabel Allende and Gabriel García Márquez to the drama of telenovelas and the grit of urban realism – while still feeling wholly her own.
Occasionally, the narrative threads – and the prose that connects them – become messy. Disconnected episodes risk undermining the structural integrity of the work and minor characters arrive and depart with no real impact. While these moments can occasionally distract from the novel’s core momentum, they also enrich our understanding of Grachu’s life and world. This is a book more concerned with atmosphere than with tidy narrative arcs and its emotional realism is enabled by this chaos.
Hailstones Fell Without Rain is a funny, tender and fiercely irreverent debut that brims with life. It’s a novel that insists on complexity and on loving people even when it’s complicated. Figueroa Barroso’s compassion and commitment to justice are clear on every page.
Hailstones Fell without Rain by Natalia Figueroa Barroso is out through UQP ($34.99)
