Tag: Samanta Schweblin

‘Out’ by Samanta Schweblin

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

‘Headlights’ by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell

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

‘Toward Happy Civilisation’ by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell

Mouthful of Birds contains a number of wonderful stories, but perhaps my favourite is ‘Toward Happy Civilisation’ which begins like a Western and ends like an out-take from Kafka’s Amerika. It starts simply enough with a man being refused a train ticket. As a result, the train does not stop and the man is stranded and is soon lodging with the station master and his wife, yet he refuses to abandon his dream of boarding the train. The story performs a deft sleight of hand when the perspective shifts from being entirely Gruner’s and draws back (“Gruner’s actions that first day are the same as this of everyone who has ever been in his situation”) to emphasise his dream is not unique. Like so much of Schweblin’s work, the story’s ending allows us to feel something we already know only when it is revealed.

First published in Spanish in Pajros en la boca, 2010, and in English in The Atlantic, Jan/Feb 2019, and available to read online here. Collected in Mouthful of Birds, Oneworld, 2019

‘Birds in the Mouth’ by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Joel Streiker for PEN America

Samanta Schweblin has been one of my favorite short story writers for years, so it’s been thrilling to see her gain so much international notoriety recently, with her Man Booker International Prize-nominated novel, Fever Dream. I highly encourage you to seek out her translated short fiction, available online in places like the New Yorker, Granta, and Words Without Borders. Her themes include children, adulthood, fertility, consumerism, and environmental illnesses. I had to go with ‘Birds in the Mouth’ as my favorite, due to its relentless exploration of a young’s girl’s appetite (is there anything scarier to society than a young girl who knows exactly what she wants, and unceasingly pursues it?), and its central question: “what it would feel like to swallow something warm and moving, to have something full of feathers and feet in your mouth.”

Available to read online here. First published in Pájaros en la boca y otros cuentos. Editorial Lumen, 2010