The Accidentals by Mexican author Guadalupe Nettel, translated by Rosalind Harvey, is a masterfully crafted collection of stories that brims with exceptional depth and radiant insight. Exploring the complexities of family dynamics and the peculiarities of everyday life, these tales capture a profound yearning for change, a dissatisfaction with the status quo, and a relentless search for something new. Across eight compelling narratives, Nettel demonstrates her remarkable storytelling prowess. Each piece opens with an irresistible hook that pulls the reader in, only to end in an unexpected, thought-provoking twist. This collection solidifies Nettel’s reputation as one of the most distinguished voices in contemporary Latin American literature.

The Accidentals by Guadalupe Nettel is a collection of eight short stories, that explore the actions of protagonists whose lives have been disrupted.

I enjoyed 'The pink door' which follows a man who rewinds time in search of a perfect life, but with every turn of the clock he finds himself unhappy compared to the previous life. And 'Playing with fire' where a family take a break in the outdoors during the lockdown, the family dynamics explored felt so realistic but also unsettling. The tension between the father and son, but the passiveness of the mother, it was all very raw.

Nettel has become a must read author for me and I've make a note to pick up Still Born, as soon as possible.

Thank you Fitzcarraldo Editions, Guadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Guadalupe Nettel is, without a doubt, my new favorite author for contemporary short stories. Her stories do not roar; they hum quietly, their echoes lingering long after the last word.

What really stands out is how distinct the voices are. Every first-person narrator feels like a whole new person. Each story has distinct elements, but there’s a consistent vibe running through them all, like they're all tracks on the same playlist. Some more realistic, some suggestive, all somewhat melancholic.

They’re about how the smallest, most unexpected moments can nudge lives in new directions, sometimes in ways you barely notice at first. If that sounds like your kind of thing, I can’t recommend this collection enough.

Guadalupe Nettel is firmly now one of my favourite authors after reading Still Born, After the winter and now this. Eight short stories that were each achingly beautiful and as well written as you would expect from Nettel. I read this over a day and am already itching to rereads some of my favourites. Will be recommending to everyone I know so that I can discuss them!

3.5 stars

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC!

This is a quiet collection of stories exploring a myriad of relationships, between families, between husband and wife, between lovers. They’re melancholic, often wistful. Most are hyper realistic, but a couple venture off into more mysterious/magical realms. These two were probably my favourites. The Pink Door sees a man take a gamble on the unknown, rewinding certain parts of his life to relive them. The Torpor is set a few decades from now, in a world where the new normal during 2020 stayed that way, people never leaving their houses and living a life online.

The people in these stories are unsatisfied, confused, yearning, hopeful, stuck. In a world where it sometimes feels like we’re increasingly distant from one another, where dissonance is evermore present, the characters here strive to forge connections, fail as they sometimes do, they’re trying.

I didn’t find it as impactful as Still Born, but much better developed than the stories in Bezoar. The writing is lovely, translated by Rosalind Harvey.

The fantastic writer Guadalupe Nettel returns with another winner after the publication of her international Booker shortlisted novel, "Still Born". Published by Fitzcarraldo Editions (and translated by Rosalind Harvey), "The Accidentals" is a collection of stories about a group of characters who try to form connections in fractured societies. Nettel uses the short story form to create a group of characters who feel displaced in the world of covid and creeping fascism and totalitarianism. Nettel's care for her characters and the way she never gives easy answers to their problems makes this small volume such a treat to read.

There is something so comforting about reading Nettel because you know you're safe in her literary talents. She writes of people without a country; characters who do not know how to deal with disappointments in life; characters who feel unmoored because of the effects of covid deaths and restrictions. Nettel does not give readers easy answers or melodramatic endings. Instead, she opts for realistic moments of understanding. We don't live our lives in easily digestible aphorisms, and Nettel know this. She instead writes in a way that forces readers to engage their empathy and understanding of the characters' struggles.

This is another first-rate book from Guadalupe Nettel. Nettel is becoming one of my favourite writers, and Fitzcarraldo Editions again show what a superb job they do at selecting books to publish.

A book so beautiful I have felt the need to eke it out so that it doesn’t end. The writing (and translation) is sublime and captivates from the very first sentence. Each story has a similar feel without feeling clumsy or forced. If I had read only one of these stories I would judge it to be a triumph but the collection as a whole is mesmerizing.

The Accidentals
By Guadalupe Nettel
Translated from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey

Eight short stories with a common theme of displacement in some form another; a sliding door moment, an inadvertent betrayal, a brush with death, a story of being careful what you wish for, a story of watching someone else live the life you wanted for yourself, a dystopian imagining of living 15 years into a pandemic where lockdown is permanent.

At about 15 minutes for each story this collection could be gulped down in one go, but like all brilliant short stories, they each spark something in the imagination that makes them highly discussable. The writing style invites the reader straight in and with the exception of one, I found myself brooding over them and chatting about their premises with anyone who would listen.

My personal favourite is Life Elsewhere, but that is purely down to that whiffle we get when we encounter a familiar and loved location in our reading, in this case Gràcia in Barcelona.

I couldn't recommend this collection enough, a perfect combination of thematically contemporary and technically classical short stories that I could imagine George Saunders giving a big "Russian Greats" thumps up to.

Thanks to #NetGalley and #fitzcarraldoeditions for the ARC

The Accidentals is a collection of short stories by award winning novelist, Guadalupe Nettel. This collection deals with people coping with isolation, estrangement and the unknown.

My favourites were the title story about a boy and a girl who are the closest of friends but end up living in different countries; Torpor which imagines a family's life in a world coping with a virus for which there is no vaccine; Pink Door which tells the story of a man enticed into changing his life simply by eating a piece of confectionery. I think Pink Door edged it with the favouritism because it seemed so plausible - we are dissatisfied, we want a change but are we ever prepared for the outcome of change.

The writing is superb and I found myself wanting to rush through these stories and had to force myself to slow down. They are well worth savouring.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Fitzcarraldo for the advance review copy. Most appreciated.

The short stories in this collection have a compelling narrative voice, as if confiding in the reader. I liked the way they felt grounded in everyday life even as elements of the uncanny and paranormal were introduced.

My favourite passage was about a family's fraught game of Scrabble: "The first word he put down was JOKER, then he waited a couple of turns and added BASTARD, then BULLY, putting his tiles down on a part of the board which gave him a triple word score. At first we didn't notice, but then it started to come clear that these insults were aimed at his father."

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance copy.

One of the more inventive and touching short story collections I read in a while. Each story is characterised by an accident, or an occurence, that changes the typical flow of events. The stories are all told in the first person, but in all of them that first person is a very different character.

They are (nearly) all great, but the most memorable is perhaps the story of the man in his 60s looking to find new excitement in his life, but stumbles upon a way to do this that goes above and beyond his expectations. The story of the family trying to spend some time in nature, whose experience is turned on its head due to a bushfire is also exemplary in its analysis of a family struggling to stay together as its teenage sons turn into men. The story of the ageing actor, who regrets not getting the rental flat in Barcelona he yearned for is heartbreaking. The weakest story is, in my view, the last - describing a hypothetical reality where the lockdowns due to Covid never ended. I found that to be the least emotionally profound.

I loved the way each story was able to represent a completely fresh and different perspective on events, despite all being written by the same author. It almost felt like different people were writing these stories, and it was absolutely fantastic - I was enthralled by each narrator's emotional state, and felt immersed in their subjective reality.

It's an excellent read, and I recommend it to anyone interested in how unexpected events can affect lives in unexpected, but often small, ways. The fragility of life, plans, and intentions is paramount here.

My huge thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book in return for an honest review.

this is my second Guadalupe Nettel ever and of the year and I can safely say I have found one of my new favourite authors. Beautifully written

After her [book:Still Born|59115451], Nettel has been firmly on my radar and this collection of stories has sealed the deal. These tales are often suggestive rather than clearly defined and completed but that adds effectively to the sense of uneasy contingencies that they articulate.

Without tipping cleanly into defined genre categories like horror, suspense or fantasy, these stories play around the edges of all of these and boundary-cross in a free and creative way. They deal with disruptions: moments when something changes, when the past comes into clear view, when the present becomes untenable, when perceptions veer off in uncanny directions and when life gets shunted off its path. There may be a dark humour ('The Pink Door') but also tales where what is admitted on the surface isn't nearly as disturbing as what isn't expressed by the narrator (the brilliant 'Playing With Fire', for example).

With involving writing and some stop-and-read-it-again imagery, Nettel's work here is literarily sophisticated while appearing accessible and open. This is a good companion to the realist mode of [book:Still Born|59115451], showcasing a different side of Nettel's writing which appears to draw on wider Latin American models.

Unusually for a collection, there isn't a single 'dud' story here: every one in this volume earns its place and offers different trajectories around a theme of disturbance, disruptions and disjunctions.

This is a beautifully curated collection, with each story being distinct and specific, but tied together by a sense of displacement, of the protagonist being out of step with their surroundings, their loved ones, their community, even their time. They are short yet satisfying: minutely detailed glimpses of an experience, each one of which I could have stayed in far longer.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Typically impressive collection of seven short stories by Guadalupe Nettel from Fitzcarraldo. A short volume, the stories pivot around issues of family dysfunction and disruption against a sometimes unsettling backdrop of the natural world (Playing with Fire, A Forest Under the Earth) or uncanny playfulness (The Pink Door, The Torpor). All of the stories create a world and end satisfyingly, while leaving you wanting more, which is what a good short story should do. There is also a longing here, for home and childhood, that the title story captures most clearly. An excellent collection.

Precise, wonderfully put together. Enough of a substance for each story, enough left for the reader to walk off and wonder and draw their own conclusions. One or two stories have really stayed with me, and I'll be returning to this collection again in the future

Such a great anthology of stories to get lost in! I love that if you’re not up for reading a full story you can dip in and out of this great compilation of stories about the human experience