Bloomsbury
Review by Brian Tanguay
I had never heard of the Mexican writer Guadalupe Nettel until her brilliant collection of short stories, The Accidentals, fell into my hands. Had I become aware of Nettle sooner, I would have read her entire body of work — four novels and three collections of short stories which have garnered international acclaim — by now and followed her career closely. The eight stories in this volume validate the acclaim and testify to the successful collaboration between Nettel and her translator, Rosalind Harvey. Each story is beautifully crafted and executed, each its own universe.
A writer of extraordinary range, Nettel moves easily between perspectives, from that of a female university student, a mother of two boys, to a man of sixty-three. In “The Fellowship of Orphans” the protagonist is a grown man who never knew his parents and was raised in a public institution. “Sometimes, at a wedding, a wake or some other social gathering,” he says, “I will come face to face with someone else like me. They don’t need to tell me their story: there is something in their gaze, in the way they move or communicate that makes it obvious, perhaps not to others, but certainly to me.” I’ll simply say that this man’s idealized view of mothers is destined to be altered.
In “A Forest Under the Earth” a family is heartbroken when the monkey puzzle tree in their garden begins to die. Afraid the tree will fall and cause damage, the neighbors demand it be cut down. The family refuses and attempts to rehabilitate the tree, calling in an arborist who informs them that the beloved tree is practically dead, though from what he can’t tell. A fungus? An insect infestation? When a storm arrives one night and topples more than thirty trees in the neighborhood, the monkey puzzle tree miraculously survives. The narrator wakes in the morning and races outside to find her father sitting on the steps, his eyes bloodshot, his attitude disconsolate. He had sat with the tree all night. “I always felt as if this tree was the one that kept our family together,” he says. “Now that it’s like this, I’m scared about what’s going to happen to us.”
What happens when something coveted becomes an obsession is a recurring theme. No matter what the desired thing is — a mother’s love, a tree, a particular apartment — it often carries an unexpected consequence, a disappointment, a letdown. Nettle renders these turns of emotional fortune with sensitivity and intelligence, which is why these stories leave such an impression. From the unremarkable ingredients of life, Guadalupe Nettle conjures moving and magical literature.
