Customer Reviews

A Hammock Beneath the Mangoes: Stories from Latin America (Plume Fiction)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read this book for a counseling class. It is one of the best books I've ever read for a class. While learning a wealth of information about the widely diverse cultures represented in this book, one's imagination is ignited and inspired. This is a book full of pathos, magic, and adventures of the mind. An excellent point of departure for those interested in Latin American cultures and people.

The book has also been published under the title The Penguin Book of Latin American Short Stories. It came out in 1991 and contained 26 works by as many Latin American authors, from seven nations and Puerto Rico. Brazil, with 10 selections, and Argentina, with 5, were by far the most frequently represented countries; the emphasis on Brazil perhaps reflecting one of the compiler's specializations, Portuguese literature. With the exceptions of pieces by the writers Machado de Assis and Quiroga, who were described as the pair marking the start of modern Latin American literature, the book's selections covered the period from the 1940s to 1990, with special focus on the 1970s and 80s.

The collection featured old and new voices, the celebrated and the lesser known, and highlighted writers who created unexpected, dreamlike worlds. Some of the works could be regarded as classics: Machado de Assis's "The Psychiatrist," Quiroga's "The Dead Man," Borges' "The Circular Ruins," Cortàzar's "Axolotl," Carpentier's "Journey Back to the Source," Guimarães Rosa's "The Third Bank of the River" and Fuentes' "The Doll Queen."

Other writers were well known - Onetti, Rulfo, García Màrquez -- but their selections differed from the usual ones in other anthologies. There were other celebrated writers - Amado, Bioy Casares, Lispector, Scliar, Allende, Puig, Arenas, Cabrera Infante, Ferré. And then writers who were comparatively lesser known and from Brazil (Armonía Somers, Murilo Rubião, Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro, Lygia Fagundes Telles, Rubem Fonseca, Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes) or Puerto Rico (Ana Lydia Vega). Writers who might be considered comparable in their creation of dreamlike worlds but who didn't make it into this anthology: Asturias, Levinson, Pinera, Arreola, Monterroso, Donoso and Peri Rossi.

Some of the stories were written in a minutely described, hallucinatory style and/or seemed merely to pile incident upon incident (Borges, Carpentier, Bioy Cesares, Somers, Puig, Arenas, García Marquez, Rulfo, Cabrera Infante). The one by Cabrera Infante differed from the rest in that it was a humorous parody filled with light-hearted wordplay by the narrator. But many of these stories were nearly unreadable and couldn't be penetrated in any depth. Exceptions for me were works that described the killing of a pig and a participant's revulsion in grotesque and memorable detail (Ribeiro), the shift in consciousness of a narrator who entered a museum (Cortàzar), and a narrator who sought a character from his childhood (Fuentes). These succeeded in drawing me in to their bizarre worlds.

Others were told clearly but in a style similar to folk tales or fables and involved extraordinary, larger than life events and/or fantastic characters, such as a psychiatrist who decided to help humanity by building a madhouse in town (Machado de Assis), a father who went to live in a boat on the river and never returned (Guimarães Rosa), a lover who escaped from an angry husband (Amado), a man who found and "tamed" a woman (Allende), a magician who could pull tigers out of his sleeves but was worn down by reality (Rubião), and the plagues of Egypt as described by the Egyptians (Scliar).

Others were also told in a more or less straightforward and realistic way but created a strong atmosphere of unreality or tension, as in the description of the death of a man (Quiroga), the events surrounding a murder (Onetti), the description of a plot by two characters against a third (Salles Gomes), a female narrator's budding independence from her controlling grandmother (Fagundes Telles), a narrator's description of the menace involved in several relationships, including her own (Vega), and the friendship of two girls at school that crossed racial and class boundaries (Ferré). Fagundes Telles' writing was described by the writer as closer to the psychological precision of French writers from the 1940s and 50s than to the naturalism and regionalism (or magic realism) of her contemporaries, which won her comparisons with Colette.

Aside from the classic stories, I appreciated this collection most for the many examples of writing from Brazil, for a number of the more straightforward, well-constructed stories, and one or two of the folk tale-like stories.

This is a fantastic introduction to the rich rich world of Latin American Literature. If you are already familiar with this unique body of literature, this anthology can only expand your horizons further. Because of this book I was lead to to explore further the great works of Machado de Assis, Allende, and Amado, among others. Open this book and open yourself up to a rich new world of imagination!

Passion, creativity, a hot history, and the zest for life found in S. America shines through - in these stories--- some of which are mind blowing - and bizzare. Stories range from about 4 to 40 pages - nice depening on the amount of time you have at any given "reading moment" - a definite read for anyone who likes short stories!

I bought this "used" book through Amazon and was very pleased with its condition. Good buy - will do it again.