by Amparo Dávila ; translated by Audrey Harris & Matthew Gleeson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 27, 2018
Brief, macabre stories that twist our obsessions with animals and our own thoughts. Like Poe for the new millennium.
The borders between the animal, human, and spirit worlds are constantly breached in these creepy magical realist tales of grief and obsession.
Dávila’s 12 short stories begin with “Moses and Gaspar,” about Señor Kraus, who returns to his dead brother’s apartment to collect the dogs he left behind. Moses and Gaspar become a complicated “inheritance from [his] unforgettable brother.” Many creatures are more human than animal in Dávila’s work, and the dogs' “screams” disturb Kraus’ neighbors, while Kraus becomes increasingly animalistic. The dogs' grief comes to wreck his life. Similar connections to the animal world are found in other stories; “The Houseguest” features a jealous wife and an unnamed visitor her husband brings home: “His nourishment was limited entirely to meat; he wouldn’t touch anything else.” He hovers over the sleeping members of the house, watching them, until eventually the wife is driven mad. In “Oscar,” a family lives to serve a dictatorial creature who controls all who enter the house from his place in the cellar: “He was the first to eat and allowed no one to taste their food before him. He knew everything, saw everything. He shook the iron door of the cellar with fury, and shouted when something displeased him. At night he indicated, with sounds and signs of objection, when he wanted them to go to bed, and often when he wanted them to get up. He ate large amounts, voraciously, and without enjoyment…grotesquely.” Dávila’s animals are humanized—familiar to anyone who has lived with a cat or a dog—but their holds on the humans of her stories are tyrannical. Other tales deal with the power of the imagination to create real fear: “Fragment of a Diary” is a series of meditations on degrees of pain by a character who wishes to develop tolerance as an art. In “End of a Struggle,” Durán witnesses himself walking by with a former lover, then follows to see his other life.
Brief, macabre stories that twist our obsessions with animals and our own thoughts. Like Poe for the new millennium.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2821-3
Page Count: 144
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
Share your opinion of this book
by Russell Banks ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2013
Old-fashioned short fiction: honest, probing and moving.
One of America’s great novelists (Lost Memory of Skin, 2011, etc.) also writes excellent stories, as his sixth collection reminds readers.
Don’t expect atmospheric mood poems or avant-garde stylistic games in these dozen tales. Banks is a traditionalist, interested in narrative and character development; his simple, flexible prose doesn’t call attention to itself as it serves those aims. The intricate, not necessarily permanent bonds of family are a central concern. The bleak, stoic “Former Marine” depicts an aging father driven to extremes because he’s too proud to admit to his adult sons that he can no longer take care of himself. In the heartbreaking title story, the death of a beloved dog signals the final rupture in a family already rent by divorce. Fraught marriages in all their variety are unsparingly scrutinized in “Christmas Party,” Big Dog” and “The Outer Banks." But as the collection moves along, interactions with strangers begin to occupy center stage. The protagonist of “The Invisible Parrot” transcends the anxieties of his hard-pressed life through an impromptu act of generosity to a junkie. A man waiting in an airport bar is the uneasy recipient of confidences about “Searching for Veronica” from a woman whose truthfulness and motives he begins to suspect, until he flees since “the only safe response is to quarantine yourself.” Lurking menace that erupts into violence features in many Banks novels, and here, it provides jarring climaxes to two otherwise solid stories, “Blue” and “The Green Door.” Yet Banks quietly conveys compassion for even the darkest of his characters. Many of them (like their author) are older, at a point in life where options narrow and the future is uncomfortably close at hand—which is why widowed Isabel’s fearless shucking of her confining past is so exhilarating in “SnowBirds,” albeit counterbalanced by her friend Jane’s bleak acceptance of her own limited prospects.
Old-fashioned short fiction: honest, probing and moving.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-185765-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013
Share your opinion of this book
More by Russell Banks
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by Louis L’Amour ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 11, 1999
Superb stylist L’Amour returns (End of the Drive, 1997, etc.), albeit posthumously, with ten stories never seen before in book form—and narrated in his usual hard-edged, close-cropped sentences, jutting up from under fierce blue skies. This is the first of four collections of L’Amour material expected from Bantam, edited by his daughter Angelique, featuring an eclectic mix of early historicals and adventure stories set in China, on the high seas, and in the boxing ring, all drawing from the author’s exploits as a carnival barker and from his mysterious and sundry travels. During this period, L’Amour was trying to break away from being a writer only of westerns. Also included is something of an update on Angelique’s progress with her father’s biography: i.e., a stunningly varied list of her father’s acquaintances from around the world whom she’d like to contact for her research. Meanwhile, in the title story here, a missionary’s daughter who crashes in northern Asia during the early years of the Sino-Japanese War is taken captive by a nomadic leader and kept as his wife for 15 years, until his death. When a plane lands, she must choose between taking her teenaged son back to civilization or leaving him alone with the nomads. In “By the Waters of San Tadeo,” set on the southern coast of Chile, Julie Marrat, whose father has just perished, is trapped in San Esteban, a gold field surrounded by impassable mountains, with only one inlet available for anyone’s escape. “Meeting at Falmouth,” a historical, takes place in January 1794 during a dreadful Atlantic storm: “Volleys of rain rattled along the cobblestones like a scattering of broken teeth.” In this a notorious American, unnamed until the last paragraph, helps Talleyrand flee to America. A master storyteller only whets the appetite for his next three volumes.
Pub Date: May 11, 1999
ISBN: 0-553-10963-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
Share your opinion of this book
More by Louis L’Amour
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.