Stamm, whose precise, dry prose builds suspense in its very insistence on the quotidian, creates narratives simultaneously ordinary and strange, even uncanny. Atmospherically, these stories recall Arthur Schnitzler, or even Edgar Allan Poe: eventfulness is promised, then elided; death or oblivion hovers at the edges of an ordinary afternoon ... Repeatedly, in Stamm’s ghost-filled collection—beautifully translated, as are all his books, by the remarkable Michael Hofmann—the story proves to be an antistory, but no less a story for that[.]
Yes, his prose has the precision of his country’s famous watches. Yes, his characters often do things—cheating, leaving, hurting, stealing—that would make the Roys of HBO’s Succession look like kids on a playground. But you never stop and think, 'This is preposterous, this could never happen, no one acts like that.' If this is cold, you feel, perhaps reality is at fault ... If Stamm’s prose appears to some as 'bloodless' and 'cold,' might that be because it unspools almost like reportage? He’s a journalist embedded on the front lines of his characters’ psyches, not invested in manipulating their choices according to theme. Or, at least, that’s how he manipulates us, even as he builds his themes with a hidden smile ... vintage Stamm, a story collection predicated on how humans behave, not how we might like them to behave. Case closed, mouth shut, eyes wide open to see the truth.
What happens might be what's most interesting about [these stories], because formally and stylistically they're coolly self-effacing, rendered, in reviewers' parlance, in unadorned prose. As with the flat telling of fairy tales, on the smooth surfaces of Stamm's stories we slip easily from ordinary to strange, distinctions elided ... Whether it's Stamm, an award-winning Swiss writer, or Michael Hofmann, his trusty translator, mixing things up, the occasional confusion is typical of these stories, where characters wander between menace and melancholy, finding themselves without ever quite knowing where they are.
The narrators, both male and female, are at once unnerving and heartening in their calm, understated reactions to extraordinary events ... Stamm creates ordinary characters who become the lead actors in extraordinary situations as they follow their instincts. He creates tension with simple sentences and language --- sometimes quiet, perhaps menacing --- then follows the characters and uses barebone frameworks to show what is happening. We may or may not see ourselves in these stories, but through his fiction, we identify the choices we are given day by day. We can only imagine what might happen if we say yes.
The dozen stories in this introspective and gloomy collection from Stamm...all have a latent uneasiness to them, making the reader turn the pages both quickly and apprehensively. Standout stories build within this tense atmosphere either by revisiting characters’ potentially fateful decisions made in the past...or by watching as they unfold in real time ... While some of the stories feel a bit tiresome in their fulfillment of male fantasies...Stamm effectively sustains a dark mood. The author’s short novels are a bit more satisfying, but there is plenty here to appreciate.
