When I first read about Samanta Schweblin, my impression was that her stories might not necessarily be my cup of tea, so to speak. Literary creepiness at times verging into horror were among some of the descriptions. Nonetheless, I reconsidered. Nobelist J.M. Coetzee has succinctly captured much of her appeal. “Tales of somber humor, full of characters who slide into the cracks or fall through holes into alternate realities.” I began with Seven Empty Houses and was surprised by how compelling I found the lapidary precision of her prose; the writing is austere, but not one word is wasted as the narrative is propelled forward and after a page or two is difficult to put down. Her stories are filled with what Anne Carson has called the metaphysical silence between the words. I have since read all her work and eagerly await her next book.
‘Out’ begins with a woman coming out of the shower, standing in front of her husband wanting to say something, seemingly in atonement for a misdeed, but the words will not come out. It remains a mystery. “I have to say it, I tell myself, because it is part of the punishment I now have coming. I have to say it, I repeat to myself, but it’s an impossible command.’” Things are clearly amiss and she abruptly walks out of the house with wet hair, naked under her bathrobe, and in slippers. In the elevator she meets a man who announces his wife will kill him if he goes home. He is clearly from a different social class, perhaps a janitor or electrician, or so she surmises. As the woman is walking along the street aimlessly, the man from the elevator drives by and she gets in the car. He refers to himself as an escapist, amusingly so, as he fixes fire escapes. Yet, is she not in fact the escapist, escaping from her life and uncomfortable relationship with her husband? The story, as with many of the others, is pregnant with possibilities, dread, and foreboding. What are the man’s intentions? Why is she doing this? What will be the denouement? Part of the appeal of her work is the subversion of expectations.
Published online in English translation on Bookanista, and available to read here; also in Seven Empty Houses, Riverhead Press, 2002
A Personal Anthology 