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"Optic Nerve is one of the best books I've read in years. How did Mara Gainza pull off something so risky when it never reads as anything less than delightful and engrossing This is a book that loosens the restraints on literature and gives us a new way of seeing." -- Gabe Habash, author of Stephen Florida The narrator of Optic Nerve is an Argentinian woman whose obsession is art. The story of her life is the story of the paintings, and painters, who matter to her. Her intimate, digressive voice guides us through a gallery of moments that have touched her. In these pages, El Greco visits the Sistine Chapel and is appalled by Michelangelo's bodies. The mystery of Rothko's refusal to finish murals for the Seagram Building in New York is blended with the story of a hospital in which a prostitute walks the halls while the narrator's husband receives chemotherapy.