Month: February 2014

La Puerta Entreabierta (The Half-Open Door) by Fernanda Kubbs aka Cristina Fernandez Cubas – A Review

~ bythefirelight

La Puerta Entreabierta
(The Half-Open Door)
Fernanda Kubbs (Cristina Fernandez Cubas)
Tusquets, 2013, 221 pg
La Puerta Entreabierta (The Half-Open Door) is Cristina Fernandez Cubas’ latest book and finds her assuming a pen name, Fernanda Kubbs, to create a much more fantastical novel that celebrates famous stories of mystery while creating her own. Cubas’s work has always dealt with the fantastic, but La in Puerta Entreabierta the fantastical becomes almost the primary focus of the novel making the mysterious less an element of suspense, but exploration. Avid readers of her work, as I am, will find the book, dare I say it, a little lighter than some of her other work. Her writing style is still as good as ever and it is a pleasure to read some one of her talent write was is, for all intents and purposes, an intelligent fable.

The story follows Isa a human interest story reporter for a newspaper. She’s not particularly good and doesn’t know how to dress well either, wearing bermuda shorts to a reprimand by her boss. Her assignment is to write an article on fortune tellers. She finds a stereotypical fortuneteller dressed as gypsy and using a crystal ball. Sometime during the reading she is transported into the crystal and is trapped inside. The fortuneteller is a fraud and has no idea how she ended up in the ball. Thus begins Isa’s journey in the sphere, landing ultimately in the shop of an antiquarian dealer who on learning of her predicament tries to helper escape from the sphere.

Interspersed between Isa’s narrative are stories, told as examples, of famous frauds who fooled people with illusions and tricks. Readers of Poe might be familiar with Von Kempelen and his chess playing machine. Here, as in the other stories, she reworks the stories, playing with the legends of the frauds, both showing them as ridiculous and compelling, as if there is something in the stories that is true. It is a typical move for her, but in this book it is more playful and the stories remain what they have long been: fables.

What makes the book enjoyable are two things: the interaction between Isa and her protector; and Cubas’ ability to make what might otherwise be a light story something that shines with her strong language. Moreover, Cubas is a clever writer and her decision to leave the story open ended makes this detour into the magical quite interesting. While this will not be my favorite work of hers (hence the short review), I enjoyed it for what it is and given that it is Cubas it is much better that most books.

The Velocipedist Social Club by Norberto Luis Romero At Contemporary Argentine Writers

~ bythefirelight

Contemporary Argentine Writers has published a translation of The Velocipedist Social Club by Norberto Luis Romero. You should give it a read.

Along the town’s main street, there were no more than 400 meters from his home to the fledgling Velocipedist Social Club and Mr. Garcia walked them with his head held high and his eyes set forward, guiding his brand new velocipede beside him by its impeccable, polished handlebars, like someone proudly leading angelic, clean and well-dressed offspring to mass by the hand. But Garcia was a bachelor by inertia and his immediate plans, which had him completely absorbed, did not contemplate marriage but instead other more daring and novel ambitions. With each step he was aware that, behind the lace curtains of every kitchen window, the eyes of housewives were on him until he disappeared from their field of vision: out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the poorly concealed movements in the curtain folds, and even an incredulous face now and then suddenly veiling itself behind lace trimmings and embroidery. He knew that their curiosity wasn’t stirred by his person, despite the tight, flashy orange velocipedist outfit he wore, which was strikingly audacious in and of itself, but rather by the surprising object of his devotion, the true protagonist of that peaceful gray morning: the velocipede.

Words Without Borders Featuring International Graphic Novels Out Now

~ bythefirelight

My favorite yearly issue of Words Without Borders is out now featuring International Graphic Novels:

February brings our annual showcase of the international graphic novel. On topics ranging from Korean genocide to an inside view of French bloviation, love and intrigue in Mexico to mistaken identity in Israel, these artists delineate character and plot in their singular styles. In two looks at prostitution, Victoria Lomasko talks to the “girls” in Russia’s fifth-largest city, while Mathias Picard’s elderly woman recalls how she stumbled into the profession. Hadar Reuven’s vulnerable boy makes a devastating choice, while Egypt’s Donia Maher adjusts to a cryptic neighborhood. In two very different biographies, Kun-woong Park documents Heo Yeong-cheol’s years as a dissident in 1940s Korea, and Ángel De la Calle travels to Mexico City on the trail of the enigmatic actress, model, artist, and spy Tina Modotti. Israel’s Dan Allon plays many roles. In Iran, Nicolas Wild smokes opium and speaks of poetry. The pseudonymous government employee Abel Lanzac and Christophe Blain reveal the workings of French bureaucracy. We’re also launching a new feature, International Translation Culture, featuring essays on translation reception around the world. This month, Spanish writer and editor Luis Magrinyà considers reviewers and readers. And we present the latest installment of Sakumi Tayama’s “Spirit Summoning.”