Samanta Schweblin currently has three works of hers that are translated into English. Her first was Fever Dreams, a novel which was shortlisted of the Man International Booker Prize of 2017. It was fabulously good, and not just in my opinion… This is a collection of short stories, and it is fabulously good (at least by my reckoning 😊 )! Longlisted for the Man International Booker Prize of 2019. It was “originally published in Spanish and in somewhat different form” titled Pajaros en la boca (Ran...

A solid collection of eerie, horror-inflected stories, some very short, only a couple of pages. There’s a Twilight Zone or even Edgar Allan Poe kind of vibe to each of them, but very much updated for modern times. These stories are nowhere near as trippy and confounding as Schweblin’s novella, Fever Dream, which could be a plus or a minus depending on how you felt about that book. For me, it’s very much a plus. I enjoyed Fever Dream well enough, but I remember thinking it would work better as a

The first four stories were creepy masterpieces. The rest felt like sketches where Schweblin explores themes that will no doubt be the core of her work as a writer, and that recall the everyday dread of Fever Dream: the weirdness of family; the impossibility of knowing even those you know best; the way everyday routine can decay unexpectedly into chaos and terror. In real life it’s an accident or unexpected illness; in these stories it’s learning your daughter is eating live birds or that the bu...

‘’Calderón, on the other hand, stands motionless. He can’t bring himself to lift his foot from the one he has killed. He is, perhaps, afraid of recognizing his girl’s colours on the dead wings.’’ Twenty stories full of darkness. Deep, impenetrable, untraceable, lingering in our souls. Stories told in a strange place between reality and a world we meet in our dreams. Or are they actually hallucinations that reveal our true colours? In Schweblin's collection, the boundaries between human relati

This is a bumpy collection of short stories. Many of them feel unfinished or inconsequential. The most enjoyable are the ones with an element of horror, where there's something decidedly off about the characters and the final lines leave one shuddering and discomfited. Specifically: "Headlights," "Preserves," "Butterflies," "The Test," "Heads Against Concrete," and, to a lesser extent, "Mouthful of Birds" and "On the Steppe." With her back to us, standing on her tiptoes, she opened the cage an...

Book 3/13 for me from the Man Booker International 2019 longlistSamanta Schweblin's 2014 first novel Distancia de rescate, when translated into English as Fever Dream by the wonderful Megan McDowell, was one of my books of 2017, and my pick of the Man Booker International longlist. Powerful, unsettling, gripping, a book that genuinely disturbed my dreams. My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...Translated again by McDowell, Mouthful of Birds: Stories was, per the copyright page 'origi...

I read all of these stories first in Spanish and then again in English, worried that my Spanish might be too rusty (worth noting – neither of these languages is my native language, so words still go through some parsing process before they hit my brain). This book did make me question my level of Spanish, because Schweblin hides the bizarre among the mundane in a very matter of fact way, that makes the reader go ‘wait, what?’. The consequent English reading proved that I was understanding everyt...

Some of this collection felt a bit underdeveloped, but I'd honestly recommend checking it out solely for the first four stories because they are straight fire.

While I liked the taut, evocative writing and the gorgeous cover, the stories themselves often felt empty to me. These stories are absurd and sometimes horrific, but horror and absurdity alone are not enough for me. There are some really great stories here, but not enough to make up for the more so-so ones.

3.5, rounded up.I was not a huge fan of Schweblin's first work to be translated into English, Fever Dream, but found it interesting enough to want to see what this second volume held. And although (standard disclaimer), I am also not a huge fan of short stories, most of these 'worked' for me, and none of the 20 contained herein are absolute duds (although I could have done without the animal abuse in 'The Test' :-( ) . Most of them are surreally creepy, kind of a hodgepodge of Poe and Kafka, and...

I really admire Schweblin's boldness—she writes stories that are unsettling and just slightly off, akin to Ottessa Moshfegh, though the latter's are generally a bit more grotesque or filthy. Major props to Megan McDowell for a seamless translation as well. Though I preferred some stories over others (as with any collection), there really were no stories I disliked. I appreciated that she never overwrites; all the stories are between 5-20 pages, give or take a few. Though some tend to be more on

The first story reads like Borges meets Carter, but none of the others matches it for atmosphere or creepy coherence. After the first three or so the level drops a fair bit, and but for the occasional moment thereafter (and a couple of stories simply didn’t work at all for me), like Fever Dream, it’s accomplished and very readable but good rather than great.

Man Booker International Longlist 2019. Argentinian author Schweblin impressed critics with Fever Dream in 2017; with the result that they clamored for more of her works to be translated from Spanish. This collection of twenty short stories, originally published in 2008, reflects her surrealistic tendencies and dark nature [think David Lynch]. Her excellent writing takes a seemingly mundane situation and transforms it into something extraordinary—or even just plain weird. In ‘Butterflies’ a fath...

I read Samanta Schweblin’s book Fever Dream when it was listed for the Man Booker International in 2017. It was a stand out book because it was so beautifully creepy and very unsettling. It meant that I approached this book slightly nervously: was this going to lead to another couple of disturbed nights’ sleep with weird dreams.Unfortunately, it turns out I didn’t really need to worry. There are some strange stories here, but nothing with the creep-factor of Fever Dream.We start (Headlights) wit...

I read six and a half stories from this collection of 20. I was unimpressed enough by those to feel fine about abandoning it. There's a common theme of high-concept stories that are nothing more – they introduce something weird or horrifying, and that's pretty much it. 'Butterflies' is particularly terrible; it reads like the first thing a beginner might come up with at a creative writing workshop. A few of the others, particularly the title story, have better development, but still don't feel l...

An unsettling, disturbing set of short stories. Schweblin creates relatable characters with effortless brushes of words only to destroy them by pushing them beyond the borders of humanity. The characters become eeire, inhuman, making some of these stories stink with psychological horror.Schweblin is a bit of a literary Salvador Dali- taking people and events, bestowing them new forms and dimensions.I found these stories so refreshing, puzzling and mesmerising. They made my mind work, made me shi...

| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | |Like most collections of short stories Mouthful of Birds has some stories that are hits and ones that are misses. I think the collection definitely showacases Samanta Schweblin's creativity and versatility. While most of the stories are permeated by the surreal they differ in tone and subject. Schweblin makes the familiar feel unfamiliar. Many of the stories examine recognisable scenarios from an unexpected angle and it often takes a little time to catch up to wha...

[3.5] Reasonable collection of unsettling stories, with a handful of interesting pieces, but not amazing. I've not read Fever Dream, but have been thinking about possible comparisons with other Latin American-Spanish authors, such as classic Mexican literary-horror writer Amparo Davila, whom I first heard of through the hommage The Iliac Crest, and recently I read one short story by Horacio Quiroga. Perhaps someone who has read more of these authors can comment how much Schweblin owes to them (a...

3.5 stars really.

These are a literary collection of short stories by Samanta Schweblin translated from the Spanish. They are rather dark fare, infused with horror, stepping onto the territory of the strange, fantastical, the unexpected and even the supernatural with a strong sense of foreboding. As might be expected by such a large number of stories, from the slight to some that have more substance, they prove to be a mixed bag. To my disappointment the style and approach of storytelling fails to vary. So we hav...