Customer Reviews

The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala (Iowa Short Fiction Award)

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This is a beautiful collection of stories. The writing is vivid, the character portrayal rich with detail and emotional depth. I remain haunted by what I read in this book: the unsettling images, the keen insight into a town on the other side of the globe, the energy of the characters. This ranks among the best-written books of short stories that I have read, and I heartily recommend it.

Mark Brazaitis has done a wonderful job of capturing the human experience in this terrific collection. I found myself being drawn into each of the stories and falling in love with the characters. His use of magical realism captures the spirit of Latin American literature perfectly. I highly recommend this collection and look forward to reading future works by this extremely talented new writer.

This is an extraordinary look at what may seem like an ordinary town. The stories here vary from the horrific ("Jose Del Rio") to the mournful ("The Whale") to the humorous ("How They Healed") to the epic ("Bathwater"). Throughout the collection, the author shows immense compassion for his characters.

Make way for Mark Brazaitis, a new voice, a new awareness in American letters. Not that he pushes his way onto stage center, understand. On the contrary this diffident artist masks his considerable art and talent in gentleness. His collection of stories, "The River of Lost Voices," taps deeply into the experience and sensitivity of Guatemala, and, through this country into a larger Latin American landscape. In literary terms, the vein is known as magic realism, a well-spring of Latin reality. But he does so as an U.S. American, and because of this serves us all as guide into its mysteries. His understanding of female psychology is wonderful to behold. In contrast, García Márquez and Vargas Llosa, the reigning gods of magic realism, approach their women with characteristic macho bravado. Not so Brazaitis. His insight here is uncanny. Here's a man after woman's heart.

Buy this book for a great story telling experience

Although, I enjoyed some of the short stories, and they provided some insight on situation faced by the people of Guatemala, I was disappointed in this book for 2 reasons. First, I understood, that the book was a voice of a Guatemalan writer. It turns out, however, that the author is a native of Washington D.C., who spent 4 years in Guatemala with the Peace Corps. He does not write of the experience of an expatriate in Guatemala, but rather writes from a first person psychological perspective of the Guatemalans themselves, especially the indigenous people. While an outsider often can have penetrating insight into a culture, especially one's own, they remain an outsider with an outsider perspectives and values. My second grounds for disappointment, and I believe related to the first, is that a predominant theme in most of the stories concerned the sexual experience of the principle characters. While human sexuality is no doubt a riveting part of human experience, and much written about in contemporary serious literature, I was disappointed that other themes more central to the people of Guatemala were not more deeply explored.