It is easier for these characters to stay silent than to try and explain the shadowy, strange things that stalk them. Often coupled with these very real terrors is the knowledge that their experiences will be doubted. Whether she is writing about a wife whose husband brings home a ravenous and frightening guest, a young woman plagued by a not-completely-unwelcome visitor in the night, or a family held hostage by their possibly monstrous son, the horror is subtle-more is suggested than told. How is this the first time I am reading Amparo Dávila? And when can I read more from her? In these stories, she creates creates claustrophobic worlds in miniature and populates them with people tormented by things we can't see. There is no one like her, no one with that introspection and complexity. The work of Amparo Dávila is unique in Mexican literature. Amparo Dávila is Kafka by way of Ogawa, Aira by way of Carrington, Cortazár by way of Somers, and I'm so grateful she's in translation. Margaret Randall - World Literature TodayĮach of these stories is equal parts Hitchcock film and razor blade: austere, immaculately crafted, profoundly unsettling, and capable of cutting you. Readers of Dávila’s stories find it difficult, perhaps impossible, to forget them. Her writing is intentionally opaque and allows readers to draw a number of different interpretations it is this intriguing, elusive quality that has perhaps led to her enduring popularity in Mexico. Dávila has said in interviews that one of her favorite subjects is the mysterious, the unknown, that which is not within our grasp. Like a dream, Dávila’s fictional realm is filled with signs and symbols, with hybrid creatures who appear to defy the laws of nature, and with characters who do not act according to logic or reason. The world Dávila imagines weighs on the brain like some sort of delirium. Reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, Franz Kafka, and Edgar Allen Poe, Davila tests the limits of fiction.įilled with nightmarish imagery and creeping dread, Dávila’s stories plunge into the nature of fear: Terrifying.

It is this silent scream which permeates The Houseguest.

For a very long time, women have sought comfort in the darkness when their own lives were full of quiet despair. Dávila radiates an interesting sense of unease and calamity. The Houseguest will make you paranoid you will second guess every shadow and slight movement that catches your eye. Amparo Dávila's prose, her psychological awareness, and the beauty of her characters' misery is encompassing. I cannot believe that this is the first that I am experiencing Dávila in English.įor the first time, we finally have a collection of her stories translated into English and they’re as good as, as uncanny and mesmerizing as, some of the best work by Kafka or Poe.ĭávila is a marvel, and this book casts a delightful and disconcerting spell.

The houseguest and other stories