The Dangers of Smoking in Bed in Around the World in 80 Books

Sep 28, 2021 Tony rated it liked it

Shelves: translated-fiction, short-stories, setting-south-america, fantasy

This collection of twelve short stories reads like a contemporary collection of Grimm's tales, set mostly in Buenos Aires, narrated by, or featuring, young women. Each dark story contains a ghost, spirit, or supernatural element that pushes the protagonist down a macabre narrative path -- sometimes in the service of socio-political commentary. While each story has its own hook, the tone and style doesn't vary much, and so they can all start to run together. I limited myself to one story per day This collection of twelve short stories reads like a contemporary collection of Grimm's tales, set mostly in Buenos Aires, narrated by, or featuring, young women. Each dark story contains a ghost, spirit, or supernatural element that pushes the protagonist down a macabre narrative path -- sometimes in the service of socio-political commentary. While each story has its own hook, the tone and style doesn't vary much, and so they can all start to run together. I limited myself to one story per day over the course of 2-3 weeks, and they still bled together. They might have more impact the further out they are spaced -- reading one per month over the course of a year might be the way to go.

A number of the stories involved spirits seeking rest: "Angelita Unearthed" has a creepy rotting baby spirit, "The Lookout Tower" has a ghost seeking to lure sometime into suicide to set it free. "Back When We Talked to the Dead" is the most overt in referencing Argentina's dark days, with its teenage protagonists using a Ouija Board to reach out to the "disappeared." Similarly, while "Kids Who Come Back" is superficially about the zombielike missing children who reappear en masse, it's hard not to read it as an allegory for the long-term trauma of the Dirty War.

Female desire is a familiar catalyst in the horror genre, and it shows up here in a few different stories, including the super-creepy "Our Lady of the Quarry" and the body-horror tale of a woman obsessed by heartbeats in "Where Are You, Dear Heart"? Less successful is the gross-out ghoulish tale of "Meat", in which two teenage girls obsessed with a possibly undead rock star, take their obsession to the ultimate level. Other stories are more straightforward morality tales -- for example, in "The Cart", a drunk beggar is driven from a neighborhood, leaving behind a curse on those who ill-treated him. "Rambla Triste" proposes a supernatural stench that invades the gentrified Barcelona neighborhood which has been cleansed for tourist consumption.

As a whole, while I appreciated almost all the stories (I found the title story to be a bit of a dud, and "The Well" rather too straightforward), I'm doubtful that any will truly linger in my imagination a year from now. That said, I do think that quite a number of them could make excellent jumping off points for deeply compelling and atmospheric films. Definitely worth checking out by readers with an interest in psychological horror -- and worth a warning that there's plenty of potentially triggering material in here. ...more

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Mar 21, 2023 Fee rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Notes I made while I was reading:

Buenos Aires. Like a slow motion car crash you can't look away from. Meat. Flesh. Surrealism. Lust. Revenge. The horror of teenage girls. Heat. Hunger.

I absolutely adored this collection. If you're a fan of Poppy Z. Brite, you'll love it too. ...more

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