The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Sebastian, Four Mothers, Restless, and The Most Precious of Cargoes
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Letters from Latin America
Reviews of fiction by Argentinean author Federico Falco, Ecuadorian Mauro Javier Cardenas and verse by Mexican poet Ulises Carrion
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JOHN GREEN explores the argument that psychiatry needs to move away from the idea of just seeing and treating the individual
SYLVIA HIKINS applauds a polemic against “cleanfluencers” and considers radical alternatives to current inequalities of housework
RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
High quality pulp, rollicking online murders, Abnorman Britain, and high skates drama: reviews of The Get Off, Everyone In The Group Chat Dies, Pagans and First To Fall
DENNIS BROE notes what happens to content when the streaming giants incorporate AI and deregulation into their economic models
A PERFECT Cemetery (Charco Press, £9.99) is Argentinean writer Federico Falco's fourth collection of short stories, and it’s one of his most accomplished.Unlike many of the better-known short-story writers from Argentina, Falco was not born in Buenos Aires but in Cordoba, a province in the centre of the country surrounded by mountains, sierras and lakes, and it this supposedly idyilic landscape that shapes each of the stories in the collection.
They flow with a slow and hypnotic rhythm, with the brilliant clarity now associated with Falco’s refined style.
Particularly striking are The Hares, in which a mysterious hunter spends his days hidden in the mountains, his cave or in front of the altar that he built with the bones of the eponymous animals; and Silvi and Her Dark Night, in which the bored protagonist abandons her Catholic faith in order to get closer to a handsome Mormon, rebelling against her oppressive mother and the social conventions of her sleepy town as she does so.
More from this author
A pamphlet by British Latinx poet Patrick Romero McCafferty, poetry by Anglo-Argentinian Miguel Cullen, and a book of conjuring poems by Mexican Pedro Serrano
LEO BOIX selects the best books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction written by Latinx and Latin American authors published this year
Mexican Yuri Herrera’s novel about Benito Juarez in New Orleans, and poetry by Mexican Fabio Morabito and Argentine Sergio Chejfec
Femicide and the search for justice in Mexico: a book by Cristina Rivera Garza; and a travel book through Latin America by Welsh poet Richard Gwyn