A writer with a taste for violence. Not blood, but violence. A very interesting collection from someone with a very, um, interesting sensibility. I suspect I will pick up something else at some point but he’s completely different from anyone I’ve ever read. Intriguing. ( )

he first story is Night drive is only two pages but it is complete with an interesting character, some suspense, and a dark surprise. The title story about a rather vicious killer and I found it extremely unsettling (think American Psycho without the brand names--only this is set in Brazil).
I, somewhat reluctantly, read on thinking "I paid for this book!" The next story, Betsy, about a gentle death was easier to take. In Angels of the Marquees a lonely man tries to help homeless derelicts with dire consequences. In Enemy another lonely man seeks out his old high school buddies. It is both funny and sad.
Account of the Incident concerns an accident between a bus and a cow. Pride is about a man who refuses to die because he has a hole in his sock. Notebook is a tale of seduction, with an amusing twist. Eleventh of May is the name of a terminal facility for the aging.
In Book of Panegyrics a man becomes a live-in caregiver to a dying man in order to use the place as a hideout, but we don't know exactly what he is hiding from. Trials of a Young Writer is the story of a man more interested in his press image than he is in his writing or his live-in girlfriend. In Other a busy is harassed on the street by a beggar. Things got violent again in Happy New Year; Dwarf is about an unemployed bank clerk with woman trouble; and Flesh and the Bones didn't make much sense to me.

All in all, it turned out to be a satisfying, varied collection, mostly on the dark side with some touches of humor, some macabre, some noir, all very readable. I'm not sorry I bought it. ( )

Una inagotable galería de tragedias humanas recorre el inframundo de la ciudad. El odio, la desesperación, la amargura adoptan los rostros más diversos, en una sociedad cruel que es la real y la que no refleja la publicidad. En «El cobrador», un asesino escribe poemas y se cobra cuentas pendientes; en «Pierrot de la caverna», un pedófilo se sincera a una grabadora... ( )

I had not heard of Rubme Fonseca before, but Wikipedia calls him an “important Brazilian writer”, so there you go. I was certainly delighted to find his dark and original voice. The short stories on offer here range in size but all have a very pessimistic, cynical tone.

Bleak, takes-no-prisoners accounts of the less carnivalesque side of Brazilian society. An obvious cross-media comparison is the movie City of God, but Fonseca is more reined-in in his storytelling style (although since this is a translation, one never knows). Think Carver, Chandler, even Hemingway. Good stuff, if hardly a beach read. ( )