The week of colors

The late Mexican writer Garro, whose Recollections of Things to Come earned her a reputation as a pioneer of magical realism, dazzles in this 1963 collection of stories about hauntings, curses, and the uncanny. In "It's the Tlaxcaltecas' Fault," a woman returns home after an afternoon away, only for her maid to tell her that she's been missing for weeks. "The Tree" follows a wealthy racist woman who opens her door to an elderly Indigenous acquaintance bearing a knife and a bloody story of demonic possession. In the title entry, the mysterious Don Flor tortures women named after days of the week, in rooms specially designed for each day and the women who embody them. Garro's expertly woven stories showcase her boundless imagination and insightful exploration of the entanglement between national and personal histories. Throughout, McDowell perfectly preserves Garro's lyricism, as when a character recalls as a child seeing photos of dead bodies in the newspaper: "There were days like that one, when death's skinny fingers touched the streets and the trees, to make us feel that nothing contained in this whole world was ours." In the introduction, Álvaro Enrigue cites the influence of Garro, who died in 1998, on Gabriel García Márquez. This collection highlights what made the author such a seminal figure in Latin American literature. (Nov.)

Thirteen short stories by one of the Mexican progenitors of magical realism, translated for the first time into English. In Garro's fleeting, powerful visions, the only thing that's certain is uncertainty, though never the uncertainty of the author, the characters, or the readers. Rather, Garro explores the uncertainty of time itself. In "It's the Tlaxcalteca's Fault," a young wife in a wealthy household flits through the centuries, imprisoned by the comfort of her life in modern-day Mexico City, free when she suffers the horror of the fall of Tenochtitlán to the invading conquistadors in the 1500s. In the title story, two sisters spy on the mysterious Don Flor, who keeps the colorful days of the week imprisoned in his round white house, torturing them into submission so that he may "fit [them] with the virtue that would check [their] vice." In "The Day We Were Dogs," the same two children will themselves into becoming dogs named Christ and Buddha and--together with Toni, a real family pet--wander through an animal's nonsynchronous experience of time, where they witness a gruesome murder. The theme of parallel time frames and characters who experience multiple simultaneous realities is employed in the majority of the stories, as are repeated characters--the two sisters, Eva and Leli; their witchy housekeeper, Candelaria; the beleaguered servant, Rutilio--who resemble each other from story to story but do not perfectly replicate the lives they lived before. The result is prose that swims with a heady sense of transformation, of sorrow, of the inescapable violence of the past, of the predictable violence of the future, all threaded together by Garro's fine stylistic sensibility and startling descriptive voice. Originally published in 1964, this collection stands as a seminal work prefiguring the surrealist and magical realist movements that would come to define so much of Latin American literature in the decades to come. However, a contemporary reader coming fresh to Garro's work will find a voice that feels as vital today as it ever did. Crucial stories that pierce the heart of the modern world. A must-read. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.