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