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McSweeney's #46 (2014)

by Dave Eggers(Favorite Author)

3.52 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1938073851 (ISBN13: 9781938073854)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

McSweeney's

series

McSweeney's Quarterly Concern

review 1: This is a collection of 'crime' stories from several Latin American countries. Few if any of the authors will be familiar to American readers, although a couple have novels translated into English (e.g. Alejandro Zambra). In several stories, it was hard to figure out what the crime was as the entire story was set in a world of crime. Sometimes there was no crime until the very end of the story. Two or more were set in the world of transexual prostitutes, though they were labeled transvestites. This perhaps is a result of translation or may reflect different understandings of the terms in the countries in which the stories were set. My favorite story by Carol Bensimon 'Horses in the Smoke' is set in Porto Alegre, the city I lived in Southern Brazil in 1999. There is no cr... moreime, except the beating of a protestor by two skinheads he confuses for secret police. In another story, set in Honduras, '1986', the rebellious son of a rich family is sent to a mental health center that is supposed to use alternative therapies. It is a fraud perpetrated by an American, where inmates are tortured and even starved. The crime/mystery genre is fairly new in Latin America. Most of these writers are young novelists, not mystery or crime writers. The collection gives a sense of the lawlessness that is too common in many Latin American countries. The stories are uniformly dark - no cozy mysteries here. That's fine with me as I am not a lover of what I call the "Agatha Christie" style of 'oh my, there's a body in the garden - how inconvenient'.
review 2: Another Solid Issue of Mcsweeney's One of the things I love about Mcsweeney's is that you never know what the next installment might bring. This issue was entirely made up of crime stories by latin american authors. As always with Mcsweeney's, the quality of the writing was high, the editing was spot on, and, for this volume, the translations were terrific. Several of the stories in the first half of the issue echoed very similar themes and situations. That in itself was an interesting window into other cultures. But, for me, it was the penultimate story that was worth the price of admission. "So Much Water So Far From Home" at times bordered on the sublime. A few stories fell flat, but none were bad. Looking forward to the next issue. less

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