Read as leg 7 (Chile) of the Bookpacking
reading journey.
Although the author is Chilean by birth and
upbringing, these short stories reflect his wider world view and experience,
spanning the Americas, Europe and Russia.
Many
take as their subject a portion of an individual’s life, retold second hand in
a style almost verbatim. As for the ‘heroes’
– they are anything but; criminals, gangsters, pimps, whores, porn stars and,
worse of all, poets, all feature heavily.
The best for me was the title story in which
a recently deceased narrator observes with understandable distaste the
unpleasant fate of his corpse at the hands (thankfully only the hands) of a
necrophiliac.
This collection is not for those who like a
good tale with a punchy ending; most of the stories simply share a slice of the
unusual before fading away without resolution, and so maybe reflect life rather
than art.
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