CUENTOS: An Anthology of Short Stories from Puerto Rico

Twelve stories by Puerto Rican writers home-based either on the island or in Spanish Harlem's barrio--but so wretchedly packaged and translated (luckily the Spanish is interleaved) that you come away with little more than a jumbled hint of what these writers are getting at, and how. The expressionistic work of Emilio S. Belaval (1903-72) elbows to the fore; his tales of poor villages and outsized emotional displays is reminiscent of Verga's Sicilian stories. RenÉ MarquÉs mixes strains of patrician Spanish decorum with mythic, Indian landlove. But other pieces, by Pedro Juan Soto, JosÉ Luis González, and Emilio Diaz Valcárcel, are all but hidden behind inadequate, confusing, and homogenizing English renditions. A sloppy collection, whose merits are strictly catch-as-catch-can.