Four by Four

by Sara Mesa, Katie Whittemore (Translator)

Overview

“In Four by Four, Mesa’s sentences are clear as glass, but when you look through you will be terrified by what you see.”—Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel

Set entirely at Wybrany College—a school where the wealthy keep their kids safe from the chaos erupting in the cities—Four by Four is a novel of insinuation and gossip, in which the truth about Wybrany’s “program” is always palpable, but never explicit. The mysteries populating the novel open with the disappearance of one of the “special,” scholarship students. As the first part unfolds, it becomes clear that all is not well in Wybrany, and that something more sordid lurks beneath the surface.

In the second part—a diary written by an imposter who has infiltrated the school as a substitute teacher—the eerie sense of what’s happening in this space removed from society, becomes even more acute and sinister.

An exploration of the relationship between the powerful and powerless—and the repetition of these patterns—Mesa’s “sophisticated nightmare” calls to mind great works of gothic literature (think Shirley Jackson) and social thrillers to create a unique, unsettling view of freedom and how a fear of the outside world can create monsters.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781948830140
Publisher:	Open Letter
Publication date:	05/05/2020
Pages:	230
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Sara Mesa is the author of eight works of fiction, including Scar (winner of the Ojo Critico Prize), Four by Four (a finalist for the Herralde Prize), An Invisible Fire (winner of the Premio Málaga de Novela), and Cara de Pan. Her works have been translated into more than ten different languages, and has been widely praised for her concise, sharp writing style.

Katie Whittemore is a graduate of the University of NH (BA), Cambridge University(M.Phil), and Middlebury College (MA), and was a 2018 Bread Loaf Translators Conference participant. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Two Lines, The Arkansas International, The Common Online, Gulf Coast Magazine Online, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Brooklyn Rail, and InTranslation. Current projects include novels by Spanish authors Sara Mesa, Javier Serena, and Aliocha Coll, Aroa Moreno Durán, and Nuria Labari.

Read an Excerpt

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12TH

I arrived at the colich yesterday. Night had fallen by the time I finally found it. I admit: I’m a hopeless driver, especially on unfamiliar roads. I made my first mistake at the detour on the highway. I had to turn around and start again. Then I passed through a pine forest on a dirt road. I drove slowly, uncertainly. I turned on the high beams, blinding a few rabbits. I heard the cry of a bird, but I don’t know which kind.

I reached the road’s end at last, hungry and confused.

My sense of disorientation was met head on by total darkness. Apparently, everyone here goes to bed very early. The silhouettes of stone buildings stood out among the shadows. Not as large as I expected, but ornate and pretentious, like from another time.

A woman in an apron met me at the gate, her head bowed. She seemed to be expecting me because she didn’t ask my name or reason for being there. She simply murmured follow me and led me to my room in a stone dormitory on the left side of the property.

The room is spare but comfortable. A double bed, mounted TV, desk with a swivel chair and prints of contemporary art on the wall. I tried the internet connection and it seemed to work fine. I thought about taking a shower, but I didn’t know where it was and the woman in the apron had disappeared without giving me any instructions. I hung my clothes in the closet and got into bed, still dressed and without having eaten dinner.

I fell fast asleep, unusual for me.

I had a strange dream I can’t quite remember today, but it kept me entertained all night long.

I was woken up this morning by the ringing of a telephone which sits on the nightstand and which I hadn’t noticed yesterday. A cordial female voice summons me to a meeting in one hour. A welcome meeting, she specifies. I look at the clock. It’s only 8 AM, and Sunday, too. The sun has barely risen. Through the window, I can see a well-tended garden with tall hedges, vestiges of the night’s fog.

I realize I will have to adapt to a different schedule.

I’ve peeked into the hallway and seen other doors like mine, but none appear to be to a bathroom. I don’t know where to wash up, do my business. I’ve been forced to urinate in a plastic bottle, which I’ve stashed behind the nightstand. I’ve wiped the sleep from my eyes with a tissue and now I’m waiting for the meeting, as I write.

I’ll know more soon.


I met Señor J. and still don’t know what to make of him. The headmaster of the colich looks more like a shareholder than a head of school. It’s hard to explain, but it has something to do with the air he has of a self-satisfied businessman, not someone responsible for educating the young. A smug, relaxed man, pleasant expression, deep, confident voice, a graying goatee he strokes now and then.

He gives me a kind, or mocking, look from behind round glasses. He shakes my hand and welcomes me enthusiastically. Suddenly, I am put at ease.

The assistant headmaster is also in the meeting. Skinny and pale with dark circles under his eyes, he’s submissive to Señor J., eager to please. There’s no firm handshake with him, just a limp and noncommittal grasp. He smiles broadly, showing long, yellowed teeth. He’s friendly, but it’s an awkward friendliness: fixed gaze, stiff expression. I couldn’t say whether he liked me or not.

The conversation is brief. I have the impression they both think I already know all the details about the school, or maybe they don’t want to bore me with superfluous explanations early on. They limit themselves to giving precise instructions. The assistant headmaster gives me a folder with my student files, the notebook of the teacher I’m substituting, a copy of my contract, and a memory stick.

“You start tomorrow,” he adds.

I dare to ask what happened to the teacher on leave. I need to calculate how much time I’ll be able to work here, but I don’t want to seem rude, so I murmur the question. The assistant headmaster makes a slight, evasive gesture with his hand; I’m not even sure he’s heard me.

Things being what they are, I don’t press.

Then Señor J. opens one of the large windows, offers me a cigar (which I turn down) and smokes slowly, standing and leaning against the wall. I’m obviously being studied, but this examination doesn’t feel intimidating.

I would have happily said yes to a coffee. The sun is fully up and I still haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon. I worry that my stomach might be growling. I also think about my bad breath and whether or not they’ve noticed it.

What should I do? Ask where you can get breakfast around here, what you have to do to take a shower and brush your teeth?

What I finally do is stand up, say thank you and goodbye, and leave, closing the door behind me. I have the urge to press my ear against the door. Do they discuss me? Or is a new teacher on board just another part of the routine?

I return to my room and set all the material I’ve gotten in its place. Then I wait, not knowing what for. I wait a good long while. I don’t keep track of the time. Maybe an hour, maybe two.

I write.

My hunger pangs grow stronger, the colich fills with sounds. I still haven’t eaten. Fortunately, there are more plastic cups in my room. I pee in another and hide it with the first, which has already started to smell.

Through the window I see several students heading out to play sports. Impeccable, tidy boys bursting with health, running on the fields with their shiny hair, cheering each other on. Farther away, I make out a group of girls with a huge, cinnamon-colored dog. I can’t see anything else, given the distance and my nearsightedness.

At the moment, I feel cut-off. Cut-off and sad.

Editorial Reviews

With short, propulsive chapters, Sara Mesa creates an unforgettable gothic landscape, centered on the mysterious and menacing Wybrany College, that twists in ways that unsettle and thrill. In Four by Four, Mesa’s sentences are clear as glass, but when you look through you will be terrified by what you see.”—Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel

“The atmospheric unraveling of the mystery will keep you turning the page; the ending will leave you stunned—Mesa’s Four by Four is a tautly written literary thriller that juxtaposes the innocence of children with the fetish of control; a social parable that warns against the silence of oppression and isolation through its disquieting, sparse prose.”—Kelsey Westenberg, Seminary Co-op

“Stylistically, Four by Four’s narrative structure is both dazzling and dizzying, as its perfect pacing only enhances the metastasizing dread and dis-ease. . . . Mesa exposes the thin veneer of venerability to be hiding something menacing and unforgivable—and Four by Four lays it bare for all the world to see.”—Jeremy Garber, Powell’s Books

“Very few authors evoke a visceral reaction with prose in the way that Sara Mesa does. . . . Four by Four sounds an alarm on the dangers of power, privilege, and the self-delusions told in order to hide complicity. A work of high gothic art, Four by Four solidifies Mesa as one of the strongest female voices in contemporary Spanish literature.”—Cristina Rodriguez, Deep Vellum Books

“Menace pervades Sara Mesa's prose. . . . For the novel's first three-quarters, she lets a sense of wrongness simmer and grow, creating suspense so strong I could barely set the book down. She deftly mixes immersive narration and relentless creepiness with incisive class commentary; by the novel's end, I was appalled both for its characters and for my own world.”—Lily Meyer, NPR

“This is a linguistically precise, stylistically spare and emotionally devastating look at the corrosive effect of abuse and power imbalance, perfect for fans of Shirley Jackson and Samanta Schweblin.”—Cindy Pauldine, Shelf Awareness, starred review

“Like Buñuel’s Exterminating Angel, or even Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, the rich are left rotting in a swamp of their own design. . . . Four by Four is an uncomfortably real look into the absurd world of the bourgeoisie. It is so complex and layered that, to reach a full understanding, one may have to read it two or even three times. Not a single character, after all, is what they seem.”—Noelle Mcmanus, The Women’s Review of Books

“A meticulously constructed and chilling study of desire and influence.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Mesa presents a painful exploration of inequity, cruelty, and the immeasurable cost of belonging.”—Terry Hong, Booklist

“Sara Mesa. Don’t forget that name. The finalist for the 30th Premio Herralde de Novela. Read it. Share it. Talk about it. Open the book and begin. You won’t be able to put it down.”—Uxue, Un libro al día

“Mesa’s tale seeps into you with cold, Pinter-esque menace. It fills you with increasing dread as you realize that you need to see where the story is headed even as you suspect you are powerless to stop the pages turning towards a dark revelation.”—Merril Speck, Short Stories Bookshop

“Sara Mesa has brought a new narrative voice to the scene that is in a position to bear important fruit for the genre of the Spanish novel in the twenty first century. Already in Four by Four an author has been discovered with the capacity for artistic integration of different stylistic registers within the same novel and with a real talent for representing reality. Four by Four is an account of the sinister relationships of power corrupted by fear and latent violence that feed this social parable of Kafkian roots.”—Ángel Basanta, El Mundo

“What can I say about a story in which everything works? . . . A new author that will surprise us further in future.”—Sergio Sancor, Libros y literatura

“Sara Mesa’s prose has gradually strengthened, gaining depth and ambition, without abandoning her other inclinations: unsettling and oppressive atmospheres, characters powerless against the force of their destinies, and that which the author likes to call 'perverse utopias,' collective dreams condemned to failure again and again, burdened heavily by the community’s worst instincts.”—Alejandro Luque, Mercurio

“An original novel full of talent, an oppressive fable in which nothing is what it seems and in which its author shows herself to have some striking credentials: it is about somebody capable of creating a sophisticated nightmare using only one stroke of fine line.”—Pablo Martínez Zarracina, Bilbao

“The book’s action takes place in a boarding school . . . Sara Mesa uses this backdrop for her meditation on the relationships that are formed in closed spaces and the undercurrents of violence that generate hierarchy; in this case between students (the wealthy and those with scholarships), the teachers and the school management. On the outside there is danger, on the inside is protection, the rules, but there also exists evil . . . Secrets, class difference, abuse of power and the oppressive space are the common denominators of all the parts of this sordid tale, that to a certain extent reminds us of Elvira Navarro and which, upon finishing, leaves us ice cold and wanting more.”—Álex Gil, Qué Leer

“One of the most promising authors of today, who stands out among other virtues for her despairing vision and her talent for creating charged atmospheres, as well as her capacity for creating singular characters, frequently despicable to those who observe with malevolent humor not exempt of compassion.”—Braulio Ortiz, Málaga Hoy

From the Publisher

2020-02-10
The grim truth about a boarding school gradually unfolds through shifting perspectives and various found documents.

Spanish writer Mesa writes of power struggles at Wybrany College, an elite boarding school where the wealthy send their children to protect them from the violence of the city. Part 1 opens with an escape attempt by several of the schoolgirls. Their fear of being caught belies the school’s ambiance of freedom. In subsequent chapters, we learn of the relationships among the headmaster, Señor J., his underlings, and his students. Relationships between adults at the school involve private humiliation and subjugation. The relationships among the children mirror those of the adults. Señor J. takes on a protégé, a boy with disabilities: “The Headmaster is drawn to his submission, that passive acceptance of his fate.” The student, Ignacio, is transformed from passivity to confidence through his relationship with Señor J. and then begins to subjugate his peers. At the school, everyone seems to “barter with love, with desire.” Relationships are transactional. There are hierarchies: between teachers and students and between the regular students and the “Specials,” or students on scholarship. Several students and a teacher go missing. The teacher’s replacement, who's the narrator of Part 2, is a wannabe writer posing as a licensed educator. He senses from early on that something is hidden within the school—a set of rules, perhaps, or something more sinister. “There’s an unhealthy stillness,” he writes, “something crouching behind the silence.” As the substitute gets closer to the truth he learns what danger lies in revealing the school’s secrets. A coda, in the form of fiction written by the teacher whom the substitute replaces, shines a light on the school’s opaque systems and secrets.

A meticulously constructed and chilling study of desire and influence.

Kirkus Reviews