Reviewing for the next print issue of Mslexia (106), "What's New in Short Stories" column. Thank you for the arc!

This is what great short story collections are made of. A cohesive theme but a broad range of equally rich and succinct narratives. Several of which have left a lasting impression on me since I finished it at the start of the month. Recommend for fans of Carmen Maria Machado.

What a fantastic book of short stories! This is exactly the kind of collection I would expect from Fitzcarraldo and it did not disappoint. I am not quite sure how it is possible to communicate the calibre of the original stories via translation into English but there was no doubt. The translator has preserved the flavour and character of the original language and created a compelling voice in English.

Inevitably in any short story collection there will be favourites but after finishing the collection I am struck by how each story has taken up residence in my head.

These stories are satisfying to read and live on after they have been enjoyed. I was impressed by how deftly the writer sketched out scenarios and characters.; reading each of these stories satisfies a desire for story telling and characterisation. I wholeheartedly recommend them.

In Nettel’s new short story collection, translated by Rosalind Harvey, she presents a series of more suggestive than definitive tales, adding to the collection's uneasiness. She explores a mix of genres, from horror to fantasy, without fully committing to them, instead just brushing the surface. By doing so, she creates unique and magnetic stories that have a lasting impact.

While different, these stories all have something in common: disruptions, whether in the form of a man who finds a way to fix his dissatisfaction only to land in unforeseen consequences or an Uncle with a mysterious past. While exploring the political climates and personal turmoil, Nettel’s unique storytelling ensures that each story, despite its length, lingers in the mind long after reading.

That being said, a fault I often see in short stories is that there are always a few dull ones. This isn’t the case here; every story is powerful and enthralling, contributing to a collection that will leave readers reflecting on its subtle yet profound exploration of the human condition.

Slightly dystopian, slightly magical, realistic and relatable short stories. Well-written, engaging, cliff hangery stories that I loved so so much. Musings on marriage, childhood, displacement all wrapped up into incredibly entertaining pieces.

Stunning.

The Accidentals is collection of short stories where the protagnists find their lives unexectedly altered and the consequences of changing their lives. I particularly enjoyed the title story The Fellowship of Orphans. The pacing felt just right in this collection, and the overarching theme of (intentionally or not) creating a new life was well-explored. Personally, all of the references to Mexican culture was a pleasure, as I am originally from Texas. Reading this collection took me back a bit! The translator did an excellent job as well, and overall this is a great collection for someone like me, who typically doesn't read short stories. I look forward to reading more of Guadalupe Nettel in the future.

Although ready a book of short stories might take away some of my engagement, this one kept me fully there, eager for the next one.

Nettel's messages are not direct and easily discernible, but instead are steadily ephemeral. What is right? What is wrong? What does the heart desire? What does the mind say? It gets blurry. Nettel writes with a steady pen which successfully captures the blurriness in our lives, in the decisions that we take, how every unsteady step might lead to one ending or another. We but peer through the glass darkly.

The Stories themselves:

Imprinting - but tell me what happened.
The Fellowship of Orphans - do onto others what you'd want done to you.
Playing with Fire - oh no, there might be a cuckoo in our nest
The Pink Door - be very very careful what you wish for.
A forest under the Earth - me and the tree that defines me.
Life Elsewhere - finely a glove that fits me.
The Accidentals - here, there, but where?
The Torpor - real, scarily so.

An ARC kindly give by author/publisher via Netgalley.

I greatly enjoyed this series of short stories. They revolve around interpersonal relationships between families and the secrets (both known and unknown) that exist within them. The collection begins more grounded and progresses to being more speculative. There is nothing better than a short story collection that has a shared motif to raise the experience and this has that. However, a couple of stories brought the average down for the collection. Still, a greatly enjoyable reading experience that had a couple of 'ohhh' moments with revelations.

💫 From the epigraph:
“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” (Anaïs Nin)

💫 “Rarely do we decide how we should act based on the present, and much less on the intuition of the moment. We do it based on the good or bad experiences that we have had before, and on the prejudices about reality that we form as a consequence of these.”

💫 “Liberty always has a price, which is why there are so many different, personal forms of dissidence. […]
I don’t regret it; it’s the price I pay for what I believe in. Life leaves its mark upon those who dare to look at it head on, lucidly.”

Loved this collection of short stories by Guadalupe Nettel, first published in Spanish as Los divagantes in 2023, and translated into English by Rosalind Harvey (pub. April 2025).

The stories ranged in style and tone; some more speculative, others drawing on gothic elements, some more insular and others told with a more macroscopic feel. All had an undercurrent of darkness and melancholy, that uncanny sense of something being set in motion by the series of choices one makes in the flow of life, not always stilling and seeing things as they are in the moment, how these choices then have consequences for us and those around us in ways we don’t immediately grasp.

The stories explored our social and political climates (migration, pandemic, experiences of childhood and womanhood) as well as universal aspects of the human condition (nostalgia, regret, desire, loneliness). A few were notably influenced by the recent pandemic lockdowns, at once a personal and global experience. As in Stillborn, I love her engagement with science and the natural world, drawing their language into the world of her stories to great effect, underlining the nature of ourselves and our climates as inextricable from our non-human kin. These stories confront our interconnectedness just as they do our inherent aloneness in this solitary, shared voyage called life.

There wasn’t a dud here imo, each story left an impression on me. Thank you so much @fitzcarraldoeditions for this copy, I loved every minute! 💙

I usually enjoy short story collections more than the average reader, but this one didn’t work for me. The stories felt aimless, lacking substance and depth, with no compelling characters or plotlines—just meandering narratives that failed to hold my interest. I’m not sure if some of this was lost in translation, but I also wasn’t a fan of the prose.

The author's most well-known novel, Still Born, has been on my TBR for a while, but after this experience, I’m in no rush to pick it up

A really good set of short stories here from the author of Still Life, which I'm yet to read but is now firmly on my TBR list.

Literary without ever being over-complicated and obscure, I also thoroughly enjoyed the mix of different genres employed in the various stories. There's magic realism in the tale of a man who inadvertently changes his whole life, horror in the story of the mother who's becoming scared of what her son might be capable of, and speculative fiction set in a world where society never found a vaccine for the Covid-19 virus. And then there's the more 'straight' literary fiction, such as the first story in the collection, of a girl visiting a relative in hospital without the knowledge of the rest of her family.

Highly recommended for fans of translated fiction and high-quality short stories.

Nettel is such an incredible writer. Coupled with Harvey’s stunning translation, this short story collection is just as gripping and well written as Still Born. It obviously doesn’t have the emotional pull or the character building of that novel, but I loved the slightly eeriness of these stories and the deadpan tone which was just perfect. Nettel shows how when we zoom in on the lives around us which seem perfect, strange things are actually happened beneath the surface. This is a collection which will definitely grip you and I genuinely loved every story inside it - they were all a perfect length as well. Can’t wait for more from both of these women!

Like all short story collections there is a variation on quality, but I enjoyed most of these short stories equally. I was a big fan of Still Born by this author and found the stories in this collection to feature the same things that I enjoyed so much in Still Born. The author's writing style and descriptions are stunningly beautiful and captivating, and I was really moved by the deeper meaning in the stories.

I absolutely loved Still Born so was thrilled to have the opportunity to read this short story collection by my favourite Mexican writer whilst in Mexico recently. I savoured these stores, reading one per day throughout my trip and they provided a moment of perfect literary escapism each day.

I just love how Nettel (and Rosalind Harvey translating) describe people, family dynamics and uncover the extraordinary within the mundane. I keep thinking about several of the stories now, what excellent storytelling to deliver such reader investment within the space of a few pages. A slim book that delivers more to the reader than its size would suggest. I’ve no doubt I’ll return to these stories in the future. Loved.

One of the best short story collections I've read. These stories were sometimes eerie and some touched on political themes. They were all beautifully written and I look forward to reading more from this author

I am really enjoying exploring more short stories at present and this collection was very interesting - and like life didn't always go where you'd expect, or have satisfying endings.
Some of the stories were outright unsettling but all were incredible visual and whatever the setting I always 'saw' them as much as read them.

The translations were incredible and I often forgot that these stories weren't originally written in English - as is so often the case with Harvey's translations. I'm looking forward to reading more from Nettel now too.

The Accidental is a set of stories which firmly feel like they belong together, without going to painful lengths to make it obvious to the reader why. Family, or absence of family, is the strongest thread throughout but beyond that it becomes pleasingly difficult to pinpoint why these slot into place so well as a collection. Each piece has a distinct, clear voice and manages to feel contemporary and timeless simultaneously. Enough references - to the pandemic or, fleetingly, to uses of technology - are made to root the tales firmly in the modern experience yet the stories themselves feel universal.

This was a pleasure to read and the most I’ve enjoyed a collection of contemporary short stories for some while.

A set of eerie and thought provoking short stories within which Nettel shows herself to be a master of the uneasy and unsettling.

My usual complaint with short story collections is that they either have a couple of stand out stories and the rest are a take it or leave it, or the protagonists all sound so similar it feels like it should have been written as one longer novella. Nettel, however, completely mastered the art of threading the stories together thematically whilst offering them each a distinctness and quality that allowed them to stand alone too.

Rooting many of her stories in realities with which we should be familiar (pandemics, housing blocks, hospitals), Nettel stretches and distorts her protagonists experiences to develop a quality of unreality, usually accompanied by a large amount of disconcertment.

The eponymous short story 'The Accidentals' sealed the deal for me in terms of my views on Nettel's writing - albatross and the intangible connection between two lost souls - she is writer on my radar now.

The Accidentals is a series of thematically linked short stories about strange spaces of transition. Characters are in lockdown, or between relationships, or homes. Families collapse, time is bended, and things become unsettled. Interestingly, this is a piece of lockdown literature that speaks so much on the nature of lockdown literature.

But I found this all rather unfulfilling, it was a book of in-betweenness, but nothing more. These stories capture these transitional phases in life, but seem to merely paint vignettes rather than actually exploring the feelings they evoke. I do not seek perfect resolutions in stories, but I feel like nothing much happened or was explored in these stories. They lack a bit of substance for me.

Conceptually, this book is so far up my alley, but unfortunately it fell short in these ways. Perhaps I would prefer the longer writings of this author.

A really enjoyable and brilliant set of short stories by Mexican writer Guadalupe Nettel translated by Rosalind Harvey. The connecting thread of the collection is a character who goes off course from the predicted pattern of their life by encountering an unexpected person or event. A number of the stories contain an element of fantasy which adds to the delight making some stories read like fairy-tales for adults.

The narrative style is direct and straightforward with touches of colour and detail adding emphasis and meaning. Another theme which occurs is that of the power and wonder of nature. The title takes its name from albatrosses who lose their way and end up lost and far from where they need to be to breed. In one story a forest fire threatens a troubled family; in another, a woman trying to survive in a dystopian post-pandemic world finds solace in seeing a family of foxes.

The author is new to me and I'm glad to have found her work. Definitely recommend to anyone who enjoys short stories.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.