Schweblin writes weird stories – her work has frequently been compared to David Lynch. In ‘Headlights’, newlywed Felicity and her husband stop at a roadside rest stop and he drives away while she’s in the washroom. A woman named Nené comes explains that this is the place where husbands abandon their wives when they decide to move on.
As another car pulls up to drop off a woman, Felicity and Nené manage to hijack it, leaving the man by the side of the road. As the horde of abandoned women fall on him like zombies, the road lights up with the other men’s cars – returning not for their abandoned wives, but for the one man left behind.
Schweblin’s stories often leave a lot of room for interpretation, but this ‘Headlights’ hits like a sledgehammer.
First published in English in Mouthful of Birds, Riverhead Books, 2019. Read in Hotel online here
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