Book review: 19 Claws And A Black Bird fails to plumb dark themes of assault and mental illness

Nineteen Claws And A Black Bird

By Agustina Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses
Fiction/Scribner/Paperback/176 pages/$29/Amazon SG (

amzn.to/45RqzwU

)
2 stars

If abuse and mental illness are funny, this short story collection is a riot.

The synopsis calls it just that: “nineteen brutal, darkly funny short stories” taking readers into “our deepest fears and through our most disturbing fantasies. Through stories about violence, alienation, and dystopia, Bazterrica’s vision of the human experience emerges in complex, unexpected ways – often unsettling, sometimes thrilling, and always profound”.

This reviewer did not laugh once.

The collection is a mishmash of stories wherein mental illness and abuse are merely plot points, written in a way that makes it nearly impossible to understand Bazterrica’s intentions.

Among the 19 stories, three – Roberto, Earth and A Hole Hides A House – feature varying degrees of sexual assault against a minor, of which the oldest is just 15. Though the girls in all three stories emerge victorious, the stories lack the substance and finesse required to properly comment on the vile situations.

Similar points could have been made without the victims being children.

But it is unclear whether the issues lie in the original stories or the translation work of Canadian writer Sarah Moses. Sentences often seem written with beauty rather than purpose in mind, making it difficult to understand the intent of each story and what is truly happening.

For this reviewer, who does not speak Spanish, it is not possible to find out what the original text intended.

Bazterrica, born in Buenos Aires, is a prominent figure in the literary scene there. Known for her short stories, she rose to international fame with her translated novel Tender Is The Flesh (2020), which gained popularity through the #BookTok community online.

With all the short stories, the endings feel more like cliffhangers than resolutions. Many require better set-ups, yet the longer stories tend to drag.

When writing from the perspective of male narrators, it is unclear what Bazterrica’s intent is as the men describe female characters in disturbingly objectifying ways.

In No Tears, protagonist Juan de Tartaz describes a woman: “She had the eyes of a filthy, infertile, solitary cat. Her hair rained down on her face; it was pale, dirty water, water that discolours, that fissures your gaze.”

An unnamed narrator in Mary Carminum says of his date: “She’d done her hair in curls that fell artificially on to her shoulders, and an applique blue flower held an impossibly intricate bun. She was heavily made up. Because of the whole outfit, she seemed older than she was. I looked at her in silence, unsure how to tell her that her clothing was absurd, outdated.”

His disgust is directed at the inability to “win points” for sleeping with beautiful women, a game he plays with a friend who is implied to have drugged and raped a woman.

The only story that stands out with true tension is Elena-Marie Sandoz, chronicling an individual’s obsession with an actress that leads to stalking and threats.

The choice to use the second-person voice in four stories – A Light, Swift And Monstrous Sound, Candy Pink, The Wolf’s Breath and The Solitary Ones – prove that either Moses’ translations skills were lacking or that the stories were not well-crafted enough to truly make the reader the protagonist in a tense setting. Instead, the stories are akin to reading the emotionless directions of a bad script.

To call this collection “dark humour” would be perverse, and to call it “literary” would be a mistake.

If you like this, read: Welcome Descent by Cam Wolfe (Cam Wolfe Books, 2021, $34.99, Amazon SG, go to

amzn.to/3FIYI73

). Joseph Ridley lost everything – his wife, his job, his fast cars. When a terrible storm brews, buried memories lead him down a torturous path of addiction, rage and realisation.