RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksRemarkable ... Schweblin is a modern master of uncanny fiction, and she subtly, dreadfully parades around among the literary in these six stories of hauntings, living deaths, and gothic horror ... The book, excellently translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell, is full of glimpses of terror and glancing surreality, artfully using the techniques of genre fiction to ratchet up tension in the service of stories with a human core of sadness and guilt ... Schweblin is one of the great current writers of ‘art-dread’ ... [An] exceptional sense of mood and affect [is] established through foreshadowing and narrative manipulations of the passage of time ... A masterful interlude: narratively and affectively fascinating while simultaneously throwing the reader off-balance ... Exceptional.
Marina Yuszczuk, trans. Heather Cleary
PositiveLos Angeles Review of BooksThe book is excellent in its thesis (fiery gothic melodrama) and antithesis (icy modern ennui) but suffers a bit in the synthesis, when the two main characters meet and are immediately mutually obsessed ... Despite its slight missteps in structure, a visceral, powerful novel about the all-encompassing presence of death.
