In this extraordinary short story collection, acclaimed Mexican writer Liliana Blum presents us with a startling, tender and often hilarious take on modern life. In the affecting title story, the very ordinary fate of a young mother is laid bare as the stuff of tragedy. In Kisses on the Forehead, a personal ad leads to a desperate tryst between a virgin and a vagabond, while A Model Kit invites us to observe an unorthodox artist and his odious methods of creation. A young woman's adventures with a porn star inspire an unlikely new vocation in God Bless Ron Jeremy, and in To Adorn the Saints the appearance of a naked virgin in the bell-tower wreaks havoc on the village of San Cordelio de Cocoyotl. With lush, elegant prose, Blum performs an unflinching psychological autopsy on her twisted cast of characters, and offers a surreal yet plausible vision of life in the villages and port towns of her homeland. Appearing in English for the first time, The Curse of Eve illuminates the vagaries of marriage, motherhood and morality, and perfectly encapsulates the many small ways in which we make sense of our daily lives.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
An engaging mix of traditional Mexican storytelling and modernist sensibilities, of allegory and highly personalized narrative, of lush imagery and matter-of-fact sexuality. --Tom Dooley, editor of Electica
The Curse of Eve is a collection of stories about women women as lovers, girls, mothers, and daughters, women of hope, violence, voice, Mexico and the violence of hope. The Curse of Eve represents a first on two counts the first full-length story collection from author Liliana Blum, and the first full-length book translation by Toshiya Kamei.
The Curse of Eve is a collection of stories about women women as lovers, girls, mothers, and daughters, women of hope, violence, voice, Mexico and the violence of hope. The Curse of Eve represents a first on two counts the first full-length story collection from author Liliana Blum, and the first full-length book translation by Toshiya Kamei.
In his opening note, Kamei uses these words to describe Blum s fiction: foreboding, tragic, lighthearted, dark, and damned feminist.
Foreboding, yes, as in the story of a mistress who meets Stalin's wife or when a modern-day Miss Marple attempts to solve the crime of infidelity. Tragic, when women describe their struggles to learn the touch of a man, and others who learn it too soon. Lighthearted in the case of dwarf as Avon Lady and in one woman s chance meeting with Ron Jeremy. Dark as the inner psyche of an artist who uses real-life models for his work. The Curse of Eve as damned feminist? Always.
Blum deftly renders each woman in her own state of personal trauma. There is the moment of discovery between a husband and wife, the beginnings of an understanding between brother and sister, and the recovery of a woman coming to terms with her past. There are men too men defined by women, men driven by their repulsion and desire for women, men as narrators, observers, actors, and catalysts for action.
In the collection s title story, The Curse of Eve (A Tragedy in Seven Acts), Kamei translates Blum's story of a woman coming to terms with the pangs of pregnancy.
While her husband remains blissfully absent, a modern-day Eve traces her thoughts through the course of two violent births, the loss of her youth, and her imprisonment in motherhood.
From the insignificant act that marks the beginning of her curse to the birth of a daughter who will inherit the sufferings of her kind, the nameless narrator remarks that she is told that she must, at all times, remember to, Take it like a woman. A theme that is echoed throughout the collection, we are made to understand that Blum's women can take it all.
Even as we become acutely aware of the extent to which Eve suffers, as well as the tragedy that lies in store for her, we hold on to the hope she feels when she admits to holding her child for the first time, admitting that, at this moment nothing else matters. ...
The landscape of Mexico provides the backdrop for these experiences a country caught between the realm of superstition and spirituality, romance and reality. It defines Blum and The Curse of Eve as being both border and borderless, a nation of violence no more real than the violence of love, birth, and universal womanhood. From behind the curtains of race, class, gender, and sexuality, each woman carries her own curse of Eve, and the means to overcome it.
It is this universality that defines Blum's work and her achievement as a writer. Although the stories in The Curse of Eve carry a thread of the foreign and the fantastical, the element of humanity that pervades each piece makes the event of one scene as recognizable as the next. The Curse of Eve is exact and exacting, written in a language that renders both the subject, and the reader, bare. The birth of both a new author and translator, The Curse of Eve marks the beginning of The Fall, a descent into a fiction where we are kept waiting for the next apple to drop.
--Review by Jennifer Lue --Weave Magazine, July 23, 2009
About the Author
Liliana V. Blum was born in Durango, Mexico, in 1974. She is the author of The Curse of Eve and Other Stories, forthcoming from Host Publications. English translations of her stories have appeared in various literary journals, including Eclectica, Mslexia, storySouth, and Blackbird. She received her bachelor's degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Kansas and her master's degree from Tec de Monterey. Blum has lived in Ciudad Madero, Tamaulipas since 1997.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Utterly fascinating reading,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Curse of Eve: And Other Stories (Hardcover)
There's no such thing as an absolute. "The Curse of Eve: And Other Stories" is a collection of stories from Mexican writer Liliana Blum as she tells the story of many women and their stories which change them greatly in ways they would have never thought. The loss of innocence, creative creation of art, Ron Jeremy, and streaking virgins are all topics leading to an unusual and appealing blend of topics. Expertly translated by Toshiya Kamei, "The Curse of Eve" is utterly fascinating reading.
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