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Stories
by Guadalupe Nettel
Book Reviewed by:From the International Booker Shortlisted author of Still Born, a powerful collection of stories about characters coping with estrangement, isolation, and the unknown.
Acclaimed for her piercing insights and razor-sharp prose, award winning author Guadalupe Nettel introduces us to eight characters who are each in their own way lost and wandering, struggling to connect with the people around them.
In "Imprinting," Nettel shows us a young woman finding an unexpected affinity with an estranged uncle, whose exile from the family is too deep a secret for his niece to know. She introduces us, in "Life Elsewhere," to a frustrated actor who begins, without realizing it, to take over the life and house of a more successful former colleague. And in "The Torpor," we meet a woman who lives with her children in a dying world where it is better to be asleep than awake.
With her signature bold, stark style of writing that makes her work "a revelation" (Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies), this stunning collection interrogates humanity's struggle to communicate and reveals the universal longing for connection.
The Pink Door
In my sixty-three years of life, it has never occurred to me to hire the services of a prostitute. If anything, I was the one who, as a young man, exchanged sex for favours—such as a good meal and a warm bed—when I went backpacking around Europe. You might say that it was Lili, my wife, who planted the seed in my brain with a passing comment that triggered a long chain of thoughts and actions. One afternoon, as we were walking through our neighbourhood down one of the deserted little streets adjoining our own, Lili pointed out a new business, although in fact all that was there was a very narrow door the colour of pink bubblegum, with little blue and green hearts painted on it in pastel tones. It looked like the door of a teenage girl's bedroom. The afternoon was fading, illuminating the cobbled ground of the alley and its grey walls with a violet light, and making the colour of the door stand out with an unusual glow. I suppose it was this light that made us ...
There is a directness to Nettel's prose that highlights the acuity of her social and psychological observations, as she explores the gulf between our inner selves and the façade we present to others. Each of her eight narrators secretly harbors some kind of grief, longing, or loneliness that they attempt to hide from those around them...continued
Full Review
(672 words)
(Reviewed by Callum McLaughlin).
Daisy Johnson, Man Booker Prize Shortlisted author of Everything Under and The Hotel
I adored this collection, it spread its roots out within me. Nettel is an extraordinary writer. Gina Chung, author of Sea Change and Green Frog
Slyly inventive and delightfully disquieting, The Accidentals is an incredible story collection filled with worlds both deceptively familiar and wondrously strange. A master of the form, Nettel draws each of her universes with great precision. Each story delivers a deliciously effective and haunting sting you'll remember long afterwards. Mariana Enríquez, author of Our Share of Night and The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
Guadalupe Nettel again yet again walks into uncertain terrain with these mysterious stories. There are secrets everywhere, she says, especially in life's most intimate and familiar aspects. The Accidentals never loses its sense of things being out of joint, and Nettel explores these fears with calm and with beauty.The Accidentals is a collection of short stories by Mexican author Guadalupe Nettel, translated from Spanish to English by Rosalind Harvey. Nettel's novel Still Born, also translated by Harvey, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2023.
Here are some more examples of contemporary Mexican literature in translation worth having on your radar.
Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughes
Following the murder of the local "witch," a village tries to find out what transpired; multiple narrators share their perspectives to arrive gradually at the truth. This is a brutal and breathless look at a community ruled by poverty, violence, and corruption.
Red Ants by Pergentino José, translated by Thomas...
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He who opens a door, closes a prison
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