Message from the Shadows

Beautifully written and pretty absorbing - although perhaps best dipped into rather than read straight through - Tabucchi's short story collection set in Italy is tinged with nostalgia and has a distinct melancholy feel with a touch of disquiet thrown in for good measure.

Worth a look.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. Review also posted to Goodreads.

I received a preview copy of this short story collection from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I thank them for the opportunity to experience a new (to me) writer.

I have never read any of Tubucchi’s stories before and I enjoyed the opportunity. One can divide these stories into what I would call evocative and narrative and both were very effective. I also could list a third category—those that completely went over my head and lost me. Unfortunately there were a few of those also.

Among my favorites:

“Letter from Casablanca” and “Bucharest Hasn’t Changed a Bit”—wonderfully evocative tales of a style that are almost never written by an American but are so beautifully written by Italian or Latin American writers. Think “Cinema Paradiso” and you will know what I mean.

“The Trains that Go from Madras”—as I finished this story I felt that it could have been quite at home published in a Hitchcock mystery magazine. The story had an almost British feel to it, as stories set in India often do. Could it be the fact that it takes place on a train? Great story with a real punch at the end.

“The Woman from Porto Pim”—Hemingway didn’t write this, obviously, but he would have liked it. A very satisfyingly unapologetic story about human emotions and their consequences.

“Message from the Shadows”—one of the evocative ones that deals with the situation where one spouse passes on, leaving the other. This story ends with one of the most poignant images I have ever read—deeply emotional yet so recognizable and common-place. I doubt I that will ever forget it.

“Little Misunderstandings of No Importance”—another disturbing story offered with no apologies, this time about how the wheel of time moves and changes the positions that we find ourselves, both in society, and in relation to the people in our lives.

Once again, I would like to thank the publisher for generously allowing me to read this fine short story collection.

A wide-ranging collection of stories mostly set in Portugal and Italy, there is a lot here to enjoy, although it takes a while to get a feel for them. In the very brief title story, the narrator talks of a shadow world which is 'like a dream you know you are dreaming, that's where its truth lies: in its being real beyond the real'. In 'The phrase that follows this is false: the phrase that follow this is true' we are told 'don't believe too readily in which writers say: they lie (tell lies) almost all the time'. The best stories here reflect these playful observations, bringing together the 'micro-perspectives' highlighted in the final story 'Voices' and the broader socio-historical contexts in which they are set. Well worth your time and Archipelago/Steerforth should be congratulated for bringing them to an English language audience. I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to read them.

I enjoyed the European scope of these stories. 'The Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico' was my stand-out. Intriguing, sometimes opaque, but none of the twenty stories wasted.
Great cover art, too.

Antonio Tabucchi, for numerous reasons, is one of my new favourite authors. And this book was another good surprise.

As the title says, it is a collection of stories, some that part in Portugal, others that don't, but all within the same sign of weirdness, of looking behind appearances. It is, in each story, as if the author captured a very precise moment in time in the life of those characters, and lets us take a sneak pic inside. Some of them we fully grasp, others we are left to wonder.

In retrospect, I think the first one ("The Reversal Game"), because being set in Portugal before the revolution was my favourite. By I also loved "The Train That Goes to Madras", "The phrase that follows this is false: the phrase that precedes this is true" and many others.

I recommend to everyone who likes to read short quirky stories, full of hidden meanings and beautiful places.