In This Edition of
The BookBrowse Review
The BookBrowse Review
Published January 24, 2024
ISSN: 1930-0018
The BookBrowse Review
Published January 24, 2024
ISSN: 1930-0018
Contents
Highlighting indicates debut books
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Literary Fiction
Historical Fiction
Short Stories
Essays
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Mysteries
Thrillers
Romance
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Biography/Memoir
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Science, Health and the Environment
Literary Fiction
Historical Fiction
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Thrillers
Romance
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Biography/Memoir
| Critics: | |
| Readers: |
Introducing the Bolivian writer Liliana Colanzi, You Glow in the Dark glimmers with an unearthly light and a nearly radioactive power
The seven stories of You Glow in the Dark unfold in a Latin America wrecked and poisoned by human greed, and yet Colanzi's writing—at once sleek and dense, otherworldly and intensely specific—casts an eerily bright spell over the wreckage. Some stories seem to be set in a near future; all are superbly executed and yet hard to pin down; they often leave the reader wondering: was that realistic or fantastic?
Colanzi draws power from Andean cyberpunk just as much as from classic horror writers, and this daring is matched by her energizing simultaneous use of multiplicity and fragmentation—the book's stylistic trademarks. Freely mixing worlds, she uses the Bolivian altiplano as the backdrop for an urban dystopia and blends Aymara with Spanish. Colanzi never gets bogged down; she can be brutal and direct or light-handed and subtle. Her materials are dark, but always there's the lift of her vivid sense of humor. You Glow in the Dark seizes the reader's attention (from the title on) and holds it: this is a book that announces the arrival of a major new talent.
"Tinged with futuristic flourishes and set largely in the Bolivian Altiplano, these stories examine the aftermath of terrible trespasses, mostly only whispered about. The 'alien gaze' is a keen instrument for dissecting the human condition, and Colanzi employs it to great effect here."
―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Bolivian writer Colanzi makes her English-language debut with a shimmering collection focused on the ruinous consequences of human folly...Taken together, the stories paint an arresting portrait of corruption, industrialization, the power of nature, and supernatural forces. Readers will be captivated." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Liliana Colanzi won the International Ribera Del Duero Prize for You Glow in the Dark, further evincing the tremendous talent of this Bolivian writer whose fiction has opened up new spaces in our literature of the strange and the fantastic."
―Latin American Literature Today
"Perhaps the best thing about the collection are the coincidences that thread through it ... the luminosity of the book resides in these encounters and synchronicities, like the blue light that shines from the contaminated people in the last story, the blue of death, but also of a star or the bottom of the ocean."
―Otra Parte (Colombia)
"A rare excellence: a capacity to combine the ambiguity of poetry with the clarity of a revelation. "
―El País (Spain)
Rated 
of 5
by
chelsea
You Glow in the Dark
"You Glow in the Dark" by Liliana Colanzi is a haunting and immersive collection of short stories that deftly blurs the lines between reality and the supernatural. Through her vivid and lyrical prose, Colanzi explores themes of identity, alienation, and the inexplicable forces that shape our lives.
Each story in the collection is a journey into the unknown, where characters grapple with their own inner demons and confront the strangeness of the world around them. From the eerie beauty of a glowing forest to the existential dread of a woman haunted by her own reflection, Colanzi's narratives are as thought-provoking as they are unsettling.
What sets "You Glow in the Dark" apart is Colanzi's ability to seamlessly blend the mundane with the magical, creating a sense of unease that permeates every page. Her stories are populated by characters who are both ordinary and extraordinary, grappling with forces beyond their control and struggling to find meaning in a universe that defies comprehension.
In the end, "You Glow in the Dark" is a mesmerizing exploration of the human condition, told through the lens of the supernatural. Liliana Colanzi's storytelling is both captivating and enigmatic, leaving readers spellbound long after they've turned the final page.
Liliana Colanzi was born in Santa Cruz in Bolivia and has published three collections of short stories. She teaches Latin American literature at Cornell University. Colanzi is the founder of Dum Dum publishing house in Bolivia, an indie press focusing on fiction that mixes genres and "has a foot in the jungle and another one on Mars." She won the 2015 Aura Estrada Prize, awarded to women writers under 35 who live in the USA, Canada, or Latin America, and who write in Spanish, and You Glow in the Dark (Ustedes brillan en lo oscuro) won the prestigious Ribera Del Duero Prize 2022.
The poet and translator Chris Andrews has won the Valle Inclan Prize and the French-American Translation Prize for his work.
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