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Rating: 
Summary: For those with an imagination...
Review: Felisberto Hernendez' Piano Stories is a rare book indeed. His stories were the precursors of what is now called "magic realsim" (the style of writers such as Garcia-Marquez and Jeanette Winterson), but his tales are truly unique. They are concered with the haunting mysteries of life, and have a dreamy, otherworldly quality which draws you inextricably into them. A cast of eccentric characters and off-the-wall occurrences will keep you on your toes. I kept putting off reading the last story in the book, because I didn't want the fun to be over.
Rating:
Summary: For those with an imagination...
Review: Felisberto Hernendez' Piano Stories is a rare book indeed. His stories were the precursors of what is now called "magic realsim" (the style of writers such as Garcia-Marquez and Jeanette Winterson), but his tales are truly unique. They are concered with the haunting mysteries of life, and have a dreamy, otherworldly quality which draws you inextricably into them. A cast of eccentric characters and off-the-wall occurrences will keep you on your toes. I kept putting off reading the last story in the book, because I didn't want the fun to be over.
Rating: 
Summary: Piano Stories
Review: The oddness of Felisberto Hernandez, the man, may perhaps eclipse the essential weirdness of his fictions. There is somewhat of a mystery surrounding him: he was a pianist who used to work accompanying silent movies. He traveled extensively, performing concerts. He took up writing somewhat later in life, remained more or less anonymous up to his death. Today, he is hardly known outside of Latin American literature and yet has inspired the so-called `magical realism' literary movement, made popular in the works of the Nobel-prize winning author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.Piano Stories, so named by the publishers because nearly every single story incorporates a piano, is the first collection of Felisberto's work translated into English. It is meant to serve as a representative exhibition of the writer's career. It features fifteen pieces, two of them being short novellas (`The Stray Horse' and `The Daisy Dolls') and some others no more than a page and a half long. The introduction is penned by Italo Calvino - another major writer who was apparently influenced by Hernandez. The adjectives befitting the overall `feel' of the Piano Stories would be: elegant, absurd, surreal and otherworldly. There are repeated motifs of the nature of memory, as explored in the story `Just Before Falling Asleep' and `The Green Heart', and more extensively in `The Stray Horse' where the narrator is aware of an impending attempt to distort a series of childhood memories, for if a person were capable of changing his memories, as one changes stage settings, would that not result in a different person inhabiting the present? In `The Flooded House' a widow has decided that water has the inherent quality required for nurturing memory: "water is the place to grow memories, because it transforms everything reflected in it and it's receptive to thought." (Hernandez, P.246) In these short stories, inanimate objects acquire a life of their own when viewed in certain light - furniture is able to reveal secrets about a person and in the eerie novella, `The Daisy Dolls', a man has an affair with a life-like replica doll of his wife.
Eccentric characters abound: in `The Balcony' the reader makes the acquaintance of an agoraphobic who believes that individual parts of her house have a soul. In `The Usher' the narrator, having grown accustomed to dark surroundings, acquires a persistent glow in his eyes. Many of the stories proceed as hypnagogic trances, surreal romps through exotic surroundings. The writing style is average on the whole: a few genuine lyrical waves are balanced out by a number of slumps now and then, owing perhaps to the work's translation from Spanish. There are instances when the reader feels as if Hernandez does not quite know how to express clearly the ideas he has or to fully develop a consistent flow, as in `The Two Stories' or the unbearable `The Woman Who Looked Like Me'.
This collection of stylish pieces is enjoyable for its atmospheric engagement but in the end, looking behind the screen, the reader may come out empty-handed.
Rating:
Summary: Piano Stories
Review: The oddness of Felisberto Hernandez, the man, may perhaps eclipse the essential weirdness of his fictions. There is somewhat of a mystery surrounding him: he was a pianist who used to work accompanying silent movies. He traveled extensively, performing concerts. He took up writing somewhat later in life, remained more or less anonymous up to his death. Today, he is hardly known outside of Latin American literature and yet has inspired the so-called 'magical realism' literary movement, made popular in the works of the Nobel-prize winning author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Piano Stories, so named by the publishers because nearly every single story incorporates a piano, is the first collection of Felisberto's work translated into English. It is meant to serve as a representative exhibition of the writer's career. It features fifteen pieces, two of them being short novellas ('The Stray Horse' and 'The Daisy Dolls') and some others no more than a page and a half long. The introduction is penned by Italo Calvino - another major writer who was apparently influenced by Hernandez. The adjectives befitting the overall 'feel' of the Piano Stories would be: elegant, absurd, surreal and otherworldly. There are repeated motifs of the nature of memory, as explored in the story 'Just Before Falling Asleep' and 'The Green Heart', and more extensively in 'The Stray Horse' where the narrator is aware of an impending attempt to distort a series of childhood memories, for if a person were capable of changing his memories, as one changes stage settings, would that not result in a different person inhabiting the present? In 'The Flooded House' a widow has decided that water has the inherent quality required for nurturing memory: "water is the place to grow memories, because it transforms everything reflected in it and it's receptive to thought." (Hernandez, P.246) In these short stories, inanimate objects acquire a life of their own when viewed in certain light - furniture is able to reveal secrets about a person and in the eerie novella, 'The Daisy Dolls', a man has an affair with a life-like replica doll of his wife.
Eccentric characters abound: in 'The Balcony' the reader makes the acquaintance of an agoraphobic who believes that individual parts of her house have a soul. In 'The Usher' the narrator, having grown accustomed to dark surroundings, acquires a persistent glow in his eyes. Many of the stories proceed as hypnagogic trances, surreal romps through exotic surroundings. The writing style is average on the whole: a few genuine lyrical waves are balanced out by a number of slumps now and then, owing perhaps to the work's translation from Spanish. There are instances when the reader feels as if Hernandez does not quite know how to express clearly the ideas he has or to fully develop a consistent flow, as in 'The Two Stories' or the unbearable 'The Woman Who Looked Like Me'.
This collection of stylish pieces is enjoyable for its atmospheric engagement but in the end, looking behind the screen, the reader may come out empty-handed.
Rating:
Summary: Deslumbrante
Review: Un autor particular, extraordinario, que te hace sentir todo el sabor (y la complcadez) de lo que te cuenta
Rating:
Summary: Deslumbrante
Review: Un autor particular, extraordinario, que te hace sentir todo el sabor (y la complicadez) de lo que te cuenta. Cuenta cosas que parecen complicadas. Lo son para describirlas, pero todos las hemos vivido. Y cuenta tan bien, en las entrnhas de las cosas, que cuando lo leas casi te sientes mal
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