Customer Reviews

Body Snatcher

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I read this book just after completing Kerouac's "on the road" - but when I finished Body Snatcher I said to myself "To hell with beat culture - this is real literature". I was just stunned by the class of Onetti's writing. He is in the class of Marquez and creates a fantastic canvas like Marquez. The topic of the book is very simple and the whole story is set up in a town where life is drag and prosaic but Onetti brings a strange tone of suspense which will keep you hooked to the book. When in any author tries to look into a topic from several view points and builds up the story in these view points -the story tends to become divergent in nature. Onetti never looses the tight control of the plot. I also admire the translation - I do not how far it is true to its Spanish version but it is definitely good piece of translation. Long time back I read a book called "Body Watching" by Desmond Morris, where he describes human behavior through pictures - Onetti can be described as the literary counter part of Morris. Every essential movement of every character is described without boring the reader. Of coarse you will not find the twist and beauty of the language that you find in authors like Steinbeck, Paul Auster but may be the Spanish version has those qualities - you never know. If you get a chance buy this book. I just pray to God that some body does the same justice with translation to Akutagawa and his writings.

Let me issue a caveat on the translation of my countryman Onetti's finest book, which I originally read in Spanish. Rendering the invented word "Juntacadáveres" as "Body Snatcher" doesn't really make sense, since it seems to hint at a grave robber or something like that. "Corpse collector" would be a much better translation, the nickname referring to a man who runs a brothel full of old, ugly, depressing prostitutes. I cannot comment on the rest of the translator's work, since I haven't read it, but if the very title is badly translated, how good can the book itself be?

This said, I highly recommend this book, whose grim, surreal atmosphere will appeal to readers in search of unconventional, well-crafted writing.