If you've read Kushner's first novel, Telex from Cuba, a lot of the material in these stories will look familiar. Her writing is so good. If I hadn't already read her novels, I might rate this more highly simply on the merits of her prose.

Three short stories make up this slim collection. The title story, the third and last, contains elements of the first two, almost as if the earlier stories are missing fragments of the third. As if the whole collection were one long short story. But a little redundant. Still, it was nice to experience Kushner’s writing for the first time. Her style isn’t what’s unique about her writing; that would be her use of metaphor and fine focus for detail that illuminates the characters. Also, there is an...

Cuban HistoryThe first of these three stories, ‘The Great Exception’, is a Borges-like counterfactual fake that tells the truth of Cuban national origins in the sexual fantasies of Queen Isabella. From the island’s discovery by Columbus, who is killed, cooked, eaten, and assimilated by the aboriginal inhabitants, to its development as a decaying tropical Paris, to its virtual annexation (along with the Kingdom of Hawaii) by the United States, the constant theme is sexual vice. The ‘exception’ in...

Strange, quirky but well written. Three stories of which my favorite was the first but the third, which is the title story was interesting as well. Scenes that were like snapshots, the story takes place during Battista's regime when Rachel, a dancer of sorts, tries to seduce a French Nazi. Good but it is the first story that sticks in my mind.

I am a fan of Rachel Kushner although I am discovering she is not loved by all. I didn't realize these stories were set primarily in Cuba but looking closely at the book jacket, the Cuban flag is recognizable. I read this in an hour. It is a portrayal of the decadent side of colonialism. One image that struck me was the French Nazi SS officer reflecting that the American Cadillacs roaming the streets of pre-revolution Cuba reminded him of the Nazis driving Mercedes through Paris. Chilling. While...

This small volume, published in 2015, contains three short stories written by Kushner before her first novel Telex from Cuba was published in 2008. The stories and the preface are very good. Kushner's writing is, as always, superb. I love her writing even when I don't quite know what she's saying, at least on the first read! If you've read Telex from Cuba, you'll recognize the characters in the third story -- The Strange Case of Rachel K. The three stories are linked chronologically, although th...

This is a treat, a real doggy biscuit, for those of us who encounter Kushner’s novels first and want more. Others have spoken of this as a book much like Bolaño’s Antwerp, in that both that book and this one allow the reader to see the kernels of other books by these authors and how their longer works came to fruition from sketches, observations, images that stuck, and character studies. I love the eccentricity of these three “slight stories,” as another reviewer has called them, and their playf...

I just recently discovered Rachel Kushner. She writes quite eloquently. I am looking foreword to reading more of her work. I recently read her latest novel The Mars Room and enjoyed that also.

I read the first story, which was perhaps cleverly yet vaguely allegorical or something; I really had no idea what was going on. When I started the second story and found it to be equally confusing, I bailed. Not my cup of tea or maybe I am not clever enough but no thank you, I'm good. Wonderful sentences, though. I just wish I knew what it all was supposed to be about.

Kushner is a major talent but these short stories don't add up to a book. Read the title story, easily the best of them, in the New Yorker

 Quality, Not Value Also, in this in-between era, after the Spanish, who cooked their parrots so slowly they remained alive as they were removed from the oven, and before the Russians, who took the scrubbers off the chimneys and let the red dust rain down: a dictator's estate, with artificial waterfall and presidential barbershop, a divorcée's mausoleum, with amber Lalique windows, and the addition of cheval-de-frise on the low walls of Spanish colonial buildings, to prevent vagrants from sitt...

Time for another "amuse bouche'/AB2, and here Rachel Kushner gives us "Rachel K." Unfortunately, just today while staring at my morning mirror I swore not to madly mock meta. (Signed copies of this review are available for only $99.99, limited time only.)

a slight but dense collection of interwoven stories about street level cuban politics at various points of the twentieth century. the titular story is the strongest, focusing on identity and gender performativity of a burlesque dancer as she attempts to seduce a french nazi during the beginning of batista's reign. the global politics serve as a landscape here while the intimate details of the portrait are drawn out by our main characters. there's some real good dialogue here that blossoms into b...

A wonderful collection of short stories set in the Telex From Cuba universe. It might help to read Telex From Cuba before reading this collection, since most of the settings and characters are the same, but I can see it also serving as a good kind of prologue to Telex From Cuba.

It seems despite her massive sales and critical reputation readers are up and down about Kushner's output. This is the first of her books that I came across, practically packaged as a collectable (hardcover, small in size and pages) and published by New Directions. I loved this book to the point of coming down with writer's envy. Its experimental analysis of the "discovery" of the Americas and the notable and less-than documented characters that make up the "new world's" decadent milieu reads mo...

A Work of Seductive DetailsThis small book is a collection of three early short stories by Rachel Kushner.They seem to be modest exercises in style, or tentative efforts to design settings for her fictions. Together, as she hints in the preface, they form “a work of seductive details”, which evidences her desire to “run alongside, but with [her] own version of discovery and progress,” in which she captures “the feeling of knowing”.In the first story, “The Great Exception”, the narrator tells a t...

Cuba, on our minds with the death of Fidel Castro, has been on Rachel Kushner's mind for some time, as this slender book of evocative but elusive stories illustrates. “The Great Exception,” prompted by Kushner’s reading of a book of history, is her sketch of a “version of discovery and progress.” It concerns a Portuguese admiral and a queen and the finding of the Americas, and later a Colorado woman who, inspired by kinetoscope visions, travels to Cuba. The admiral ends up boiled in a pot, and t...

Rachel Kushner is one of our best writers, and she proves it line by line.

"He wasn't sure whether he wanted a made-up story or a true story, or even what the difference was. People talked about character, a defining sort of substance. But deception was a substance as well, as relevant and admirable as what it covered. If it covered anything, that is. He had great empathy for affects and evasions". This short collection of vibrant stories from Rachel Kushner exudes the charm, the decadence, and the deception of colonial Cuba. Kushner layers falsehoods and play-acting w...

So I decided to read this because I liked The Flamethrowers. Unfortunately, this seems to have been published for just that reason. It would have been better to wait for her to write two or three more stories. There's a three-page Preface, which is basically Kushner explaining what inspired each story. The stories all take place at least partly in Cuba."The Great Exception" - Two stories set centuries apart but linked by a fatal disease. (22 pages)Kushner was a bit too cute in the first one. The...