... an assemblage of excellence, 10 short works that captivate and confound. These stories are surreal and absurd even as they uncover certain realities – harsh and otherwise – about the Mexican experience ... It’s rare to encounter fiction that functions effectively both as commentary and as pure narrative, but these stories do just that. They are weird and visceral and deliberately difficult to define, but each of them has the power to work its way into your imagination. Funny and poignant, driven by moments of hilarity and sadness and fury, Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino is an exceptional reading experience ... There isn’t a dud in the bunch. Herbert a gift for the challenging and the evocative – images and ideas alike. In the space of just a few sentences, he crafts whole worlds, populating them with idiosyncratic idealogues and idiot idealists. He uses these strange situations and stranger characters to address some of the very real issues of Mexican life. Poverty, drugs, corruption – all viewed through the distorted fluidity of Herbert’s finely-honed storytelling lunacy ... It’s also worth noting that, while it can be difficult to discern the impact of a translator on the work being translated, there’s little doubt that MacSweeney has done right by Herbert – the wit, the energy, the insight are all front and center. A great translator is one who does not leave their prints behind, and as far as that goes, MacSweeney is a ghost ... short fiction at its finest. Julian Herbert is unafraid to push boundaries with his storytelling, resulting in a collection of pieces that aren’t quite like anything I’ve ever read. Ten gems, each possessed of their own unique sparkle and shape – a precious and worthwhile collection.
... flatters Western-style writers like the book’s namesake, Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, and Roberto Bolaño, and then cuts them down to size. Packed with the outlaws, quippy dialogue, and violence of his influences, Quentin Tarantino emphasizes the tragic circumstances that fuel these kinds of stories, proving that a Western is neither a setting nor a gun. It is a mindset and a circumstance. The result is a kaleidoscopic collection that begins faithful to influences, then morphs into a postmodern wrestling match between the seduction of capitalistic thought and the economic inequity that keeps the characters in such claustrophobic and dangerous internal worlds ... MacSweeney’s English translation imbues the collection’s narrators with the same enterprising charisma as she did the enigmatic Highway in Valeria Luiselli’s The Story of My Teeth ... an ambitious, generous boon. While this deliberately challenging read might turn off a casual reader, Herbert’s parody of Tarantino’s style and MacSweeney’s lively translation chart unmarked territory for other artists to explore. This book does future writers a kindness: Herbert is practically begging to be turned into kitsch.
... electrifying ... [an] impressive assemblage ... Beyond the death and destruction, Herbert certainly knows how to cultivate erudite narrative company ... Reunited with award-winning translator Christina MacSweeney, Herbert presents 10 stories ready to disturb, quite possibly even disgust. That said, even for the most reluctant readers, the surprisingly immersive humor and slyly playful wit make resistance futile.
It’s obvious Herbert enjoys examining the corruption of his native land, Mexico...and he excels at rendering memorable, oftentimes apologetic characters who dwell in tightly constructed worlds that feel weirdly unobjectionable and totally nuts at once ... Herbert, like Luiselli, illuminates the importance of an artist’s own storytelling and how it forms his or her identity ... Reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson, Herbert smartly partners bizarre characters with commentary on modern societal woes and how citizens react ...
Herbert doesn’t do dull ... the seemingly mundane is transmogrified by an expert who ranks among other expert storytellers mentioned throughout this collection, such as Pedro Almodóvar, Samuel Beckett, and Étienne Mallarmé. But what’s most unforgettable about Herbert’s work is its unexpected, disarming poignancy.
What stands out in the book is the importance Herbert places on stories themselves. By nesting stories within one another in a Scheherazade-like technique, he tackles the tradition of storytelling as well as its influence on the world. These are stories about storytellers—told by storytellers. Though Herbert’s experimentation is not alway successful...many of the stories here baffle with their ingenuity ... One wonders if Herbert is suggesting that everything is a pastiche now, the only difference being how obvious one’s influences are. Art imitates life in a ceaseless feedback loop, which is perhaps why these stories so closely resemble one another, and why the first sentence of the collection is repeated at the end in a slightly altered form[.]
... playful, surreal ... While not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach, Herbert’s stories use a light touch to explore the dilemma of the intellectual enmeshed in a crudely vicious world. This provocatively cerebral volume should amuse those with a taste for literary horror.
... often loopy, sometimes Rabelaisian stories ... As with a Tarantino film, the explanation for how all that has come about is serpentine, goofy, and good fun, if spattered with blood, all pushing the envelope of probability ... A writer worth seeking out, even for Tarantino aficionados.
