The Things We Don't Do

July 27, 2015
Probing the eternal mysteries of identity, self-knowledge, and love, the characters of Neuman’s dreamy, metaphysical short stories are just as likely to lose themselves completely in a therapy session as to give birth to themselves, or to discover that the most perfect relationship can be, paradoxically, too perfect to last. In “Mr. President’s Hotel,” the president of an unspecified nation discovers increasingly threatening messages addressed to him in hotel visitors’ books; the narrator of “My False Name,” traces “the strange symmetries of history” to find that his ancestors have repeatedly avoided conscription with misunderstandings over the family name. The border between life and death is imaginatively queried in “Bathtub,” as a man assiduously prepares to drown himself, and in “A Cigarette,” gangsters Vázquez and Artigas turn on their ex-crony Rojo, who settles for one last smoke before dying. Disaster is averted in the ruefully hilarious “Outside No Birds Were Singing,” when a therapist, taking a call from a suicidal patient, aggravates him into quitting therapy—but not life. Ontological questioning and semiotic confusion merge in the collection’s brief, brilliant final sections, the “Dodecalogues from a Storyteller,” in which Neuman reveals his rule: “To narrate is to seduce: never completely satisfy the reader’s curiosity.”

July 1, 2015
Thirty-four short fictions from a splendid practitioner of the craft. Neuman (Traveller of the Century, 2009, etc.), who was born in Buenos Aires and lives in Spain, is one of the rising stars of Spanish literature, and his reputation should only grow with these new English translations of his short fiction by Caistor and Garcia. These stories of varying length are divided into five discrete groups, plus a delightful addendum of writing maxims at the end. The collection touches a vast diversity of human experience, with meditations on mortality, identity, and forgiveness starched with a liberal amount of bone-dry humor. In the opener, "Happiness," a man named Marcos confesses that he has always wanted to be his friend Cristobal despite the fact that his friend is sleeping with his wife. In "A Line in the Sand," a couple finds a dangerous tension in which neither party is sure how far to go. Other stories are wildly inventive. In "Juan, Jose," we meet a troubled man and his psychiatrist, both locked in a cycle of denial that is so dynamic that it's eventually impossible to separate the physician from his patient. Neuman needs only the slightest of strokes to make his point, too. In "The Laughing Suicide," we hear the confession of a man on the edge of self-harm. "I am ashamed of the ridiculous euphoria that ripples through my stomach as the weapon falls to the floor," he writes. "Each time this mishap occurs, and although I've always been a man of my word, I offer myself a brief postponement. A week. Two. A month, at most. And in the meantime, of course, I try to have fun." Whether it's a portrait of a man preparing a deadly fish in "Poison" or the widower who has chosen to forgive his enemies in "After Elena," Neuman's stories carry a precision and grace that demonstrate a playful, witty, and piercing intelligence at work. Even with the slightest of flourishes, Neuman demonstrates a marvelous gift for the medium of short stories, infusing each with equal parts compassion and conflict.

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August 1, 2015

Born in Argentina but currently a resident of Spain, Neuman is the author of two earlier successful novels: the Alfaguara Prize-winning Traveler of the Century and Talking to Ourselves. This anthology of 36 stories, culled from several collections published contemporaneously with his novel-writing career, is in such a totally different vein thatone might not recognize that they're by the same author. These short stories--indeed, many are very short--offer offbeat scenarios and absurd situations. A few examples: a man gives birth ("Delivery"). A psychiatrist andpatient switch roles ("Juan, Jose"). A wife buys the same jacket twice as a gift for her husband ("Second-Hand"). A chair waits for someone to sit in it ("A Chair for Somebody"). A man goes to work naked ("Clothes"). The collection concludes with four dodecalogs that serve as a sort of ars poetica of Neuman's short-story craft. VERDICT Casual readers may be put off by the bizarre nature and sometimes obscure style of these pieces, but those who enjoy the macabre of Roberto Bolano, the fantastic of Julio Cortazar, or the metaphysical of Jorge Luis Borges (who makes an appearance in one of them) will be rewarded.--Lawrence Olszewski, North Central State Coll., Mansfield, OH

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