The Body Where I Was Born by Guadalupe Nettel   {Reviewed by THOMAS} This novel describes the childhood and adolescence of the author (evidently), who was born with a birthmark covering her right cornea into a Mexican family of uncompromising personalities. Evoked (remembered or ‘remembered’) with great precision, both boldly and delicately, this is an incisive portrait of a girl striving to feel at home in her own self, to overcome her feelings of being a social and familial misfit (she describes herself as a “cockroach” or a “trilobite”) without compromising her individuality. The device of having the story related to a psychiatrist (who makes no contribution (good practice for a psychiatrist)) introduces an interesting tension upon the narrative, a pressure retrospectively applied to childhood by later (here unrelated) experiences.