Math, teaching, reading, music, constant learning. En, Es, Fr Eclectic: “It's as if you have no taste.”
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I found it very slow going. The characters weren’t interesting for a long time, though the author worked very hard for them to become fully formed and compelling. The ending made up for it, it is clever, but too clever.
Laszlo Amaury
boosted
This is a collection of four novellas by Rachel Ingalls, whose "Mrs. Caliban" I had already read. These range from the opening "Friends in the Country," a kind of Roald Dahl (adult stories of Dahl, that is)-tinged visit to what may be a coven, to the doom-laden "The End of Tragedy." Ingalls' work, to me, specializes in stories about unhappy marriages that intersect with fantastical events and creatures, with elements we expect from B-movies and melodramas. I once read a piece about David Lynch that posited that we all think that Lynch's big thesis is that our idealized small-town Americana notions hide horrifying underbellies, but that his ACTUAL thesis is that nothing's hiding anything - the idealized small-town Americana and the seedy horror are not opposite sides of the same coin, they're the same side and they flow into one another. To my mind Ingalls is doing the same thing …
This is a collection of four novellas by Rachel Ingalls, whose "Mrs. Caliban" I had already read. These range from the opening "Friends in the Country," a kind of Roald Dahl (adult stories of Dahl, that is)-tinged visit to what may be a coven, to the doom-laden "The End of Tragedy." Ingalls' work, to me, specializes in stories about unhappy marriages that intersect with fantastical events and creatures, with elements we expect from B-movies and melodramas. I once read a piece about David Lynch that posited that we all think that Lynch's big thesis is that our idealized small-town Americana notions hide horrifying underbellies, but that his ACTUAL thesis is that nothing's hiding anything - the idealized small-town Americana and the seedy horror are not opposite sides of the same coin, they're the same side and they flow into one another. To my mind Ingalls is doing the same thing - many of her stories are about marriages that are terrible in a pedestrian way, and when the couple is confronted with something out of a b-movie or melodrama - a coven or a sex robot or a murder plot - the real horror is not the dramatic element, nor what the situation draws out of the couple, it's the marriage itself. One novella in the collection is not about that, not really - The Life of an Artist is about a pair of bohemian Finns who meet in Paris, their domestic lives and their struggles towards artistic success. It's very different from the other work of hers that I have read, and the most arresting novella in the volume.
Wanted something different. I’ve read two of his other books and enjoyed them: Slow Horses and Dead Lions.
Las cañerías de la casa hacían gárgaras y sonidos de tripas gigantes en los pisos altos. Los trenes cercanos desparramaban distancias líquidas, jadeantes, y se interponían como puertas translúcidas delante de los otros ruidos.
— Cuentos completos by Silvina Ocampo (Page 50)
After surviving Deep One internment camps and making peace with the government that destroyed her …
Second book. I’m curious what’s next.
"Two decades ago the U.S. Government rounded up the people of Innsmouth and took them …
It is a book about monsters. We are all monsters the book repeats several times. For a book that wades into HP Lovecraft’s nightmares it does a good job of rewriting and reworking the mythos in interesting and entertaining ways. I’m going to read the sequel because I really enjoyed it.
La vida era un larguísimo cansancio de descansar demasiado; la vida era muchas señoras que conversan sin oírse en las salas de las casas donde de tarde en tarde se espera una fiesta como un alivio.
— Cuentos completos by Silvina Ocampo (Page 32)
Del cuento: El retrato mal hecho.
"Two decades ago the U.S. Government rounded up the people of Innsmouth and took them …
First book in the series.
In some sense it is about being a stranger, a foreigner.
The short story is set after WWII and is about the camps.
I found it very delicate and careful and well-written. I’ll start the first book in the series.
First short story of a series based on the Lovecraft mythos.
The stories are very short and well-written. The metaphors are beautiful. The stories themselves are cruel, but I’m not sure why. Is it a reaction to a conservative Argentina in the late 30s?
These are the earliest of her stories. She has style and they read well, but they also feel jarring and a bit gimmicky.
I’m curious to know how she develops as a writer.
