From Publishers Weekly
Known as the Mexican Brother Grimm, Hinojosa is internationally recognized for his children's fairy tales (The Old Lady Who Ate People). This collection offers eight of his brief experimental fables for adults contending with the absurdities of 20th-century life. Despite their contemporary aspect, the characters here?a self-centered artist, wicked children who maim and murder, warring condo owners, even a fickle God besotted with Shirley Temple?have a universal resonance. All of them are as naive and as overwhelmed by the cockeyed world they inhabit as the protagonists of a traditional fairy tale. Unlike, say, Hansel and Gretel, however, they tend to make matters worse for themselves by responding with the improvisational ethics of the title. Hinojosa's experiments (random patterns of capitalization; incessant references to historical personalities; a story consisting of only one half of a dialogue; a story in the form of a numbered list) have apparently turned the Mexican literary establishment on its ear, but they may not appeal as much to U.S. readers. Nonetheless, this a spirited and amusing book. In a new version of the creation story, God, bored by a regime of "loneliness and silence" he has impetuously imposed, grows desperate to hear anything: "he'd even be content with a poetry reading." In another tale, an artist confesses a tryst to his wife because he had "always believed that women can tell when a man has slept with an actress." The translation is generally solid, especially given the challenges of experimental fiction. One hopes that more of Hinojosa's grown-up fables will be made available in English.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A bright star in the Mexican literary firmament can now be enjoyed by U.S. readers in this first English translation of Hinojosa's work. The eight stories in this knockout collection reveal in no uncertain terms Hinojosa's mastery over a rewarding form, which he has tailored to fit his own personal expression. The short story thrives because of its flexibility, the elasticity of its definition; and this author manipulates the form with razor-sharp deftness and remarkable ingenuity. He writes sparingly but can hardly be called a minimalist, a label that tends to suggest a certain blandness of prose style. Instead, he luxuriates in language while stripping plot and characterization down to bare bones. His stories deal with the spirals of life--downward ones, in particular. Dark, sarcastic humor permeates them all ("the depression that was creeping up on him with dark feelers couldn't be halted either by a double session of psychoanalysis nor by his favorite television program"). "An Example of Beauty" is structurally amazing. With no sense that this story is really a condensed novel in story clothing, Hinojosa satirizes the career climb of an artist who wants to create something beautiful and finds fame as a consequence. And "This Time, the War Was Getting Serious" is a hilarious picture of families feuding in an apartment building, with shades of the Hatfields versus the McCoys and the Montagues versus the Capulets, with a hint of
West Side Story thrown in.
Brad Hooper
