Unreasonable Hours (Passport Books) [Paperback]

Julio Cortazar (Author), Alberto Manguel (Author, Translator)

Book Description

Series: Passport Books | Publication Date: June 1995

A collection of eight stories never before published in English which combine--as all of Cortazar's stories do--realism with the fantastic, and display Cortazar's mastery at describing the ordinary moment. These stories show the heroism required when ordinary people struggle with the impossible.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Unreasonable Hours is a collection of eight stories that combine realism with the fantastic to illustrate the heroism of ordinary people in an absurd world. In Don't Blame Anyone, for example, a man simply tries to put on a wooly sweater. But in the attempt, he manages to show more courage, faith and moral strength than many other more obvious heroes. Julio Cortazar's characters are all innocent: things happen to them; if they are responsible, their responsibility is hidden from them. Their only course of action is to follow the circumstances that fate, or chance, has set before them. With an excellent translation by Alberto Manguel, this is the first time these short stories have appeared in English. -- Midwest Book Review

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Spanish

Product Details

• Paperback: 157 pages
• Publisher: Coach House Pr (June 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0889104948
• ISBN-13: 978-0889104945
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,587,527 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars truly jarring stories, December 19, 2002

By 

Alvaro Lewis "jwatson5" (Redwood City, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unreasonable Hours (Passport Books) (Paperback)

For this tiny volume of stories, I feel most of all a frequent hunger to reread. This collection provides a fine introduction to Cortazar's writing, for those who do not want to dive into Hopscotch or The Blow-Up without evidence of the author's skill to turn tales. There are two stories in this volume that I utterly love. The one presents a rather twisted world of the late high school or early university years. Two brave students seek their teachers after hours and gain access to a nearly diabolical cabal. The characters uneasily force reactions to the curious, new circumstances. The other story, hauntingly memorable for me, I would rank among my favorite short stories. The violence of street gangs and political malcontents overlaps with the domestic life of a family attempting to nurse one of its own out of a coma. The boundary shared by the private and political in these stories is subtly and subversively sketched. The importance of some stability and justice in both realms, despite the incursions of the irrational and unjust, Cortazar communicates thoughtfully within stories that do not for a second wink disingenuosly or evoke the repugnance that some more abrasively political fictions and less gloriously delightful might.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A psychedelic trip through frighteningly probable,, October 15, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Unreasonable Hours (Passport Books) (Paperback)

each story in this book leaves your head spinning, forces you to put down the book and think

In the <i>Don't blame anyone</i>, the simple act of putting on a sweater becomes the ultimate nightmare, tension rising to an impossible level and releasing, "12 floors down"... This book is short, but on shouldn't rush reading through. Instead, one should sit still for a minute (or hour - or a day, for that matter) and think... Unreasonable Hours is a wonderfully eary description of 'it can happen to you'