There’s a kind of tenderness and intensity that I crave in short stories and ‘House Taken Over’ has it in spades. It’s a little dark and quite surreal: a house is slowly occupied by an unnamed force while its inhabitants strive to keep a hold of their kitchen. The last two sentences are an unexpected love note to humankind and another clear message is that in times of crisis one could do worse than getting on with one’s knitting.
This translation was first published in Blow-up and Other Stories, New York: Pantheon Books, 1963. Read Online)
A Personal Anthology 