Symmetries: Stories (High Risk)

Stories that capture the absurdity of life. Valenzuela's view of life captures our imagination because we know how far it is from reality - cops in Buenos Aires are not afraid of dogs, latin lovers in cafes do make moves in the game of courtship, hotels in Venice overlook canals.

Symmetries ($14.99 paperback original; Sept.; 167 pp.; 1-85242-543-1): A 1993 collection of 19 imaginative stories by the Argentine writer (Bedside Manners, 1995; Open Door, 1988, etc. ) whose finest work picks up where her late countryman Julio Cortzar left off. Self-reflexiveness dominates several pieces that speculate on ways to fictionalize intractable materials, and a few (gathered under the subtitle ``Firytales'') resemble Angela Carter's fetching transmogrifications of myth and folktale. But Valenzuela's distinctive wit and concision show themselves to best advantage in a rich portrayal of Nicaragua during the Sandinista revolution (``The Charm Against Storms''), the amusing tale of a disastrous wedding night in Venice (``Desire Makes the Waters Rise''), and especially the title story: an eerie meditation on the connections between two deaths occurring 30 years apart. Very impressive work. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Valenzuela is one of the most highly regarded of the current crop of Latin American writers to appear in the United States, a thoughtful, artistic stylist who explores a variety of themes in her work. In this wonderful collection of mostly brief stories divided into five thematic sections, her main mode is both to tell an edgy story and to show the reader how it was constructed. In "The Charm Against Storms," Valenzuela places her main characters on a beach during a violent storm, as one tells the story of how she came to possess the amulet that hangs around her neck. In "If This Is Life, I'm Red Riding Hood," one of a suite of variations on traditional fairy tales, the wolf is both internal and external ("there is always a wolf"). In the title story, love among humans and apes is interposed, with brilliant results. Highly recommended for literary collections and those strong in Latin American literature.?Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib. of New York
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

With each new collection of short stories, Valenzuela, one of the best practitioners in Latin America, proves herself to be a breathtaking adapter of the form's peculiar qualities to suit her own ways of expression. For instance, she accomplishes striking results with interior monologues, as demonstrated in "Tango," a swift testimony to the tango's ability to make a woman "also love the man dancing with [her], transmitting the music to [her] through his fingertips." Also in that category is "The Quiet Cafe," in which a woman muses on the obvious physical separation she's observed between the male and female cafepatrons. Operating in another vein in the story "4 Princes 4," Valenzuela borrows images from folklore to experiment with narrative structure. In "The Charm against Storms," she shows that even when working within more conventional methods of story development, she can successfully break rules. For those readers who appreciate the perfection that short story writers can achieve. Brad Hooper