Güzellik Salonu

by Mario Bellatin, Şevin Aksoy (Translator)

Ve son 25 yılın en iyi 100 İspanyolca kitabı arasında 19. sırada.

Güzellik Salonu, Meksikalı yazar Mario Bellatin’in Türkçedeki ilk kitabı. Kadın giysileri giymekten hoşlanan bir anlatıcının sahibi olduğu güzellik salonu, zamanla salgın hastalıklardan mustarip, hastanelerde hor görülen, Homokatilleri Çetesi’nin saldırılarına maruz kalan ve toplum dışına itilen erkek hastalar için bir bakımevine dönüşüyor. Kendisi de hasta olan anlatıcının biricik uğraşıysa, özenle dekore ettiği akvaryumlarda balık beslemek.

New York Times’ın Camus’nün Veba’sını ya da Saramago’nun Körlük’ünü çağrıştırdığını belirttiği Güzellik Salonu, hastalık, ölüm, yoksunluk ve egemen cinsiyet kavrayışını sorgulamamızı sağlayan, sarsıcı, huzursuz edici bir roman.

Mario Bellatin (1960) Perulu bir ailenin çocuğu olarak Meksika’da doğdu. Doğuştan gelen bir hastalık nedeniyle sağ kolunun büyük bölümünü kullanamayan Bellatin, Peru’da teoloji, Küba’da senaryo yazarlığı okudu.

Genres: Fiction, Spanish Literature, Short Stories, LGBT, Queer, Novella, Latin American

55 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Mario Bellatin grew up in Peru as the son of Peruvian parents. He spent two years studying theology at the seminary Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo and graduated from the University of Lima. In 1987, Bellatin moved to Cuba, where he studied screenplay writing at the International Film School Latinoamericana. On his return to Mexico in 1995, he became the director of the Department of Literature and Humanities at the University of the Cloister of Sor Juana and became a member of the National System of Creators of Mexico from 1999 to 2005. He is currently the director of the School of Writers Dynamics in Mexico City.

Reviews

[Guille · Rating 4 out of 5]

Así empieza:

Hace algunos años, mi interés por los acuarios me llevó a decorar mi salón de belleza con peces de distintos colores. Ahora que el salón se ha convertido en un Moridero, donde van a terminar sus días quienes no tienen dónde hacerlo, me cuesta mucho trabajo ver cómo poco a poco los peces han ido desapareciendo."

"Una frialdad y una crueldad de acuario, con la que convivimos a diario, que disculpamos y hasta perdonamos. Crueldad como la de esos gobiernos que niegan la asistencia a sin-papeles o a enfermos de costosos tratamientos; la de esos vecinos que asaltan los centros de drogodependientes cercanos porque hacen bajar el precio de sus pisos o piensan que son una mala influencia; la de esos grupos que se divierten apaleando vagabundos u homosexuales; la crueldad de la soledad no buscada ni merecida; la crueldad con mayúscula y doble subrayado, la de la propia vida que se acaba sin remedio.

De todo ello nos habla este propietario del Salón de Belleza en una narración de un acto que podría calificarse de bondadoso, de piadoso, como es ayudar a morir a aquellos que ya han perdido la esperanza, enfermos despreciados por todos, familiares y amigos incluidos (qué mayor crueldad, qué mayor soledad), pero que es dispensada con piedad restringida, negada, quizás sin compasión, a los que no cumplen los requisitos demandados y por el bien de aquellos que sí los cumplen. Una piedad burocrática que no sabe de sentimientos, y que nos deja fríos por mucho que sea el bien que se otorga... y aunque, después de todo, no todas las reglas se cumplan a rajatabla.

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘The best thing was a quick death under the most comfortable circumstances’

Everyone suffers and everyone must eventually die, the rich and poor alike. Yet, it is the poor, the discarded, those on the fringes of society—be it by choice or cast off for being deemed as an illness to society—that must suffer and die in pitiful conditions and solitude, often forgotten by those around them or ignored by the multitude of marching feet that pound the pavement just away beyond where they lie dying in a gutter. Beauty Salon, Mario Bellatín’s powerful book that at 63 pages hugs the border between being a succinct novella or short story, is a emotionally jarring account of a young man converting his beauty parlor into a shelter for men to spend their final days as their body is ravaged by an unnamed plague which is gutting the city. ‘It wasn’t death that got me,’ he says, ‘the only thing I wanted was to make sure these people, abandoned by state hospitals, didn’t die like dogs in the middle of the street.’ Heart wrenching and brutally honest, Bellatín illuminates his miniscule allegory through impressively layered symbols as he weaves the life story of a man who must become caretaker for the dying with the pains and plight of a his community as it is faced with bigotry and burdened by the AIDs epidemic.

Beauty Salon is like an elaborate tango between life and destruction, elegantly dancing back and forth across the plotline as if it were a dance floor and flourishing each step with his mutli-layered symbolism. The story never really leaves the dance floor to progress into the untold futures of the night, but deftly swirls and steps across each inch of the narrator’s life to pull it all together as one moment of artistic beauty. Having been rejected by his mother 'for not turning out to be the straight son she had wanted,' he moves to the city a follows the advice of a former employer ‘that I should never forget that youth is fleeting and that I should take advantage of my young age as much as possible.’ He opens up a highly successful beauty salon and lives an exhausting nightlife chasing other young men at clubs and steambaths, until the plague begins to claim the lives of those close to him. Narrated by looping through past and present, his narration may be considered to be a symptom of the disease which leaves many of the young men to lie awake ranting aimlessly, yet the technique is a brilliant method for Bellatín to control that what he reveals is done at just the precise moment. This tiny novella is so carefully crafted and emits a poetic radiance through its swirling, short sentence structure.

‘Despite the circumstances, I feel a somewhat sad joy when I realize that for the first time ever I’ve imposed a certain kind of order on my life, even if the way I have achieved it does seem a bit gloomy.’

Bellatín constructs a poignant account of his community and the undeserved slighting it often receives. His nightlife is full of dangers from others, such as a gang that attacks men like him who dress as women and these victims that survive the sporadic violence are subjected to further suffering as they are subsequently shunned by the general population. The narrator is at home with the underbelly of society, with the dregs and the outcasts, and feels he must offer aid where nobody else will. Many of the first who come to die in The Terminal are rejected by society and denied medical assistance from religious organizations simply for being whom they are, and barred from hospitals for not meeting the proper economic status. Nothing is ever named, not the narrator, those awaiting the end in The Terminal, or even the plague, which only intensifies the essence of being an outcast, denied even a name in the eyes of the ideals of society.

Although the plague is never named, there is a strong implication of being the AIDs epidemic. Central to the story are the fish raised by the narrator in the beauty salon, and one of their many purposes to the narrative is to exemplify the nature of the plague as in his depiction of the vicious axolotl fish.

[T]hey were so ferocious and carnivorous that they wouldn’t put up with the presence of garbage fish, not even for a moment. I once put in a couple of garbage fish while the axolotls were sleeping I stayed for a few moments to watch their reaction. Nothing much happened during the first half hour. The garbage fish got to work, and with their big mouths stuck to the glass they started to eat the impurities in the fish tank….As soon as I left the tank, though, the axolotls attacked and devoured the garbage fish. I returned a few minutes later to discover the carnage.

While the garbage fish try to keep the tank clean, similar to the white blood cells, the axototls destroy them and condemn the tank to a slow death. There is a sense of hopelessness that permeates Beauty Salon as the narrator recognizes that no amount of care can ever cure the infected and that all he can do is ease their suffering as their body deteriorates towards an inevitable death. He remains indifferent to them, careful not to get attached, painfully resigned to their expiration date. He allows no sense of hope, discourages encouragement when symptoms temporarily subside, and bans any religious prayer or icons. He belongs to a community outcast by religious institutions, and the totality of destruction wrought upon those touched by the plague could easily lead one to feel they are outcast by a creator. There is little light to cling to in the story, and the little there is dims with each turning page as the reader witnesses the narrators dive into sorrow and solitude, resigned to his own painful demise.

Perhaps this is the feeling my mother had when, after years of being examined in hospitals, she was told that she had a malignant tumor…She sent me a letter I never answered. Now that I find myself in a similar situation, there’s no one I can write. There’s not even anyone out there who doesn’t want to write to me.

The fish are rather pivotal to the story, reflecting all aspects of humanity in the novella. The narrator first keeps only guppies, a fish he is told are very resilient and require little care—resiliency being a desirable trait in the eyes of someone who leads a exhausting and dangerous life. As the salon begins to fill with the effluvium of the dying, the fish become his last grip on the old world, being an extension of his attempts to adorn himself in beauty and life. It is when the reader begins to view the fish as people themselves when the real dark beauty of the novella surfaces. We all float along at the whim of a world we cannot understand or control, like the fish subjected to the neglect of their weary owner. They suffer from poor living conditions and fungus claims the lives of many, much like the plague. When he puts the fish on the nightstand of a dying young man, they give him comfort, like the comfort the dying find being able to spend their last days in the company of their peers. However, eventually nobody even mentions the fish. They lurk behind cloudy green glass, forgotten by those who should care for them and watch over them.

Tiny, yet filled with a melancholy power that echoes deep into the heart, Bellatín’s Beauty Salon is a poetic revealing of the hardships faced by those around us, especially those that must live with the faces many avert their eyes from. This is the sort of book that makes you want to run out and hug everyone you know and live your life as a better person, the sort of book that makes you thankfully cling to your health in the present and makes your heart ache for those less fortunate than you as you contemplate ways you could ease the ocean of suffering in the world, even if only by one tiny drop. Similar to Camus’ The Plague (well, substituting fascism for AIDs), yet as a tiny glass miniature that captures a tiny beam of poetic light and casts it upon the wall as a giant radiant rainbow. Gritty, emotionally impacting, and downright heartbreaking, this novella makes me hope that the English reading world will soon be treated to more translations of this author that has made quite a mark on the Mexican literary scene.
3.75/5

‘Now the only thing I ask is that they respect the loneliness to come.’

‘To me literature is a game, a search for ways to break through borders. But in my work the rules of the game are always obvious, the guts are exposed, and you can see what is being cooked up.’ – Mario Bellatín

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

PUBLISHED TODAY! ORDER YOUR COPY SOON.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: AIDS was my first plague. Unnameable for most of its first five years of blazing, horrible death, when a name was agreed upon it gave us something to fight. A name is more than a label. It is a badge, a target, a focus.

A badge is also, as the Holocaust taught us, a symbolic sentence of death.

That's what this short prose poem is here to remind us. It's eleven years old in English. It's a quietly bitter, carefully outraged indictment of the fear and loathing that queers with AIDS faced when there was no hope, no treatment, no medical possibility of a future.

It's no longer just my acquaintances with the sickness advancing through their bodies. The majority are now strangers who have no place to go. If it weren't for this place, their only alternative would be to perish in the street.
–and–
Now I have to run the Mortuary. To provide a bed and a bowl of soup to the victims whose bodies have already been ravaged by the disease. And I alone must do it.

Our narrator in this bitter récit is a nameless drag queen/retired beauty salonista whose own life is ending from the disease. She makes her world starkly plain in those sentences, showing that her life lived in service is ending in service. She's been a whore, she's been a beauty maven, and now she's tending to the last needs of those, like her, whose bodies aren't bodies any more:

I ask myself {as lovers come to the Mortuary's door seeking the dying} what moves those poor creatures to search for the sick. And why come in? Only to find themselves before someone who is no longer a person. Someone who, besides the space they take up, is nothing but a simple carrier for sickness.
–and–
{The Mortuary's inhabitants} become so mired in their lethargy that it's often no longer even possible for them to ask how they're doing. This is the ideal condition for doing my work. It's how I avoid getting involved with any one of them in particular, which makes my labors more expeditious.

Heartless? Or disheartened? One young lad gave our narrator a reason to be glad, for a moment, that he was alive. The disease ended the way the disease always does:

We took up collections to purchase his medicines, which were exceedingly expensive. It was all useless. The conclusion was simple. The sickness has no cure. All our efforts were no more than vain attempts to appease our consciences. ... Because of that experience, I made the decision that if there was no cure, the best outcome was a quick death, in the best possible conditions for the suffering.

That, my olds, is what we call "dissociation." And as a survival strategy, during a plague, there's not a better one to be found.

In the end, of course, there's no hope to be found in this bleak little bagatelle. There's nothing to mitigate the agony of knowing you're going to die, and it's going to suck, and then there's the Great Unknown. What is Death? Where do we go when we die?

Folks...that's a question for the privileged. The living. The dying aren't worried about it near as much as one thinks they will be. They're worried about stuff they didn't do or say or couldn't do or say or wanted to do or say. They aren't all that worried about The After, but they do get worried about The Ending. Suffering preoccupies the suffering. The sense of "let it just be over" is quite, quite common.

Bellatín knows this. He's not giving anyone great death scenes here. He's not exploring the living's worries about Death. The closest we come is when our beautiful psychopomp has a huge bonfire of all his vanities, the dresses and the gewgaws and gimcracks of his life spent on the make for sex:

The more I sang, the more clearly I remembered new songs. It kept growing, the sensation that I was entering, bit by bit, the memories they evoked. Slowly, the fire burned out, until it was nothing but a slight wisp of smoke rising from the charred remains.

That, in the end, is pretty much all we have. A wisp of smoke, a singed satin hem, a moment of song snatched from a toxic conflagration of things not worth taking, of stuff we are ready to leave behind.

[brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

the mexican experimental novelist mario bellatin is missing an arm and wears a variety of prosthetics. check it:



as if 'mexican experimental novelist' wasn't enough, we get the neon-green chair, the bald somber mug, the gay captain hook prosthetic, the black smock... UGH!!!

bellatin once stood before an audience for a Q & A and when asked for his favorite writer he invented the japanese novelist Shiki Nagaoki on the spot. the audience asked all about Nagaoki, prompting bellatin to make up tons of shit. bellatin's next book was a faux-biography of Nagaoki. it has yet to be translated into english.

and beauty salon. short & subversive about a transexual who turns her beauty salon into a place for the dead to come and die when a plague hits. the going-ons in the salon are contrasted against the going-ons inside the various aquariums inside the salon.

bellatin might be heir to another madman, a spaniard, but one who did his best work in mexico:



fuck yeah!

[Coos Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5

Este libro lo leí por recomendación de mi novio, quien quedó totalmente encantado con su historia. Y en efecto, coincido en esa apreciación ya que me pareció un buen libro en todo sentido. La idea de utilizar un salón de belleza como sitio para pasar los últimos días de vida me parece un poco morboso (positivo), y el constante paralelismo que existe entre las descuidadas peceras y el salón y sus "huéspedes" en sí me pareció excelente. Recomendadísimo.

[Franco Cárcamo · Rating 5 out of 5]

El libro tiene algo profundo que no sé bien cómo explicar. Debajo del narcisismo, la ambición y el egoísmo de la voz, hay algo que no todo el mundo puede ver, pero sé, estoy seguro, está ahí. Casi puedo tocarlo, pero igual se me escapa. Hay algo que hace explicable al dueño de este moridero. Una grieta, un brillo opaco, que comprueba que su desapego con el mundo, su indiferencia al dolor y a las relaciones, tienen un sentido. Y eso es lo que me succiona del libro. Esa intuición. Hay un universo hermoso y terrible desplegándose, y que va de peces dorados, saunas y marcas en la piel, a él perdiendo la cuenta de cuantos enfermos de sida murieron en su salón. Me enloquece pensar en su peluquería como un acuario, en sus ganas de coleccionar enfermos como animales submarinos, en su odio a la condescendencia y el falso optimismo. Y como todo eso se traduce en la frialdad de su voz. Me gusta que nunca se arrepienta de lo que dice.

Hace mucho tiempo tuve la misma sensación con otro libro. Esa intuición de que entiendo al personaje a un nivel medio indecible. De que solo yo, lector, Franco, pudo conocerlo. Solo a mí él se me reveló. Es una mentira que me encanta contarme, pero es lo mejor que me puede pasar con un libro. Quizás, lo que pasa es que siento que de una forma subterránea, me parezco a él, y que por eso me gusta tanto.

[A. Raca · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Geldiklerinde takındıkları tavırlar da kişiliklerine göre farklılık gösterir. Neredeyse hepsi çaresizdir ama kimisi her şeye rağmen hâlâ bir umut taşır."

⭐

[Yeasin Reza · Rating 3 out of 5]

লাতিন আমেরিকা আর স্প্যানিস বা হিস্পানি আমেরিকান কথা সাহিত্যজগত আমাদের পরিচিত সাহিত্যভূবন থেকে বেশ ভিন্ন।তাদের গল্পগুলো বরাবরই কেমন যেনো, বাস্তব বলে বিশ্বাস হতে চায়না।বাস্ততবার মাঝে কেমন যেনো স্বপ্ন স্বপ্ন একটা ভাব মেশানো থাকে। রিয়েলিটি নাকি ম্যাজিক তা নির্ণয়যোগ্য হয় না ফলে বিশ্বসাহিত্য ম্যাজিক রিয়েলিজম বলে এক ভিন্ন ধরনের সাহিত্য উপহার পেলো।

মারিয়া বেইয়াতিন সমসাময়িক হিস্পানি আমেরিকান কথাসাহিত্যের অন্যতম নন্দিত সাহিত্যিক। তিনি তাঁর ছোট ছোট নভেলাগুলোর জন্য বিখ্যাত। "দে বেইয়সা" বা বিউটি পার্লার প্রকাশিত হয় ১৯৯৪ সালে। এটি তাঁর সবচেয়ে পরিচিত গ্রন্থগুলোর একটি। লেখক ২০১৩ সালে বাংলাদেশে একটি সাহিত্য উৎসবে আসলে অনুবাদক রফিক-উম-মুনীর চৌধুরী'র সাথে দেখা হয়। লেখক অনুবাদকে তাঁর দুটি বই উপহার দেন। অনুবাদক স্প্যাানিশ নিয়ে গ্রানাদা আর মাদ্রিদে পড়েছেন। তিনি সরাসরি মূল ভাষা থেকে বাংলায় অনুবাদ করেন।


গল্পের কথক কিভাবে তার বিউটি পার্লার কে ধীরে ধীরে একটি মৃত্যুসদনে পরিণত করে তা ই এই নভেলার কাহিনি। মৃত্যসদন অর্থাৎ এমন একটি জায়গা যেখানে যাদের মৃত্যু অবশ্যসম্ভাবী তারা সেখানে শেষ সময়টা কাটাবে।একটি জমজমাট বিউটি পার্লার ধীরে ধীরে নিস্প্রভ মৃত্যর স্থান হয়ে উঠে।গল্প কথক বেশ নিঃস্পৃহ ভাবে,তার উদ্ভট গল্প বলার ভঙ্গিতে বলে যায় কিভাবে বিউটি পার্লারটিকে সে মৃত্যুসদনে রুপান্তর করে।কিভাবে সে একাই মৃত্যুসদন পরিচালনা করে।মৃত্যুর জন্য অপেক্ষারত মানুষেরা এখানে তার নিয়ন্ত্রণে মৃত্যুকাল কাটায়।মৃত্য সম্পর্কে তার নিজস্ব দৃৃষ্টিভঙ্গী, অবসেশন,আক্ষেপ শীতলভাবে সে বর্ণনা করে। মৃত্য বাদে আরেকটি জিনিস নিয়ে গল্পকথক বেশ অবসেসড। তা হচ্ছে অ্যাকুরিয়ামে বিভিন্ন ধরণের মাছ এনে তা পর্যবেক্ষণ করা।একের পর মাছ এনে সে তাদের আচরণ আর মৃত্যুকে পর্যবেক্ষণ করে। ছোট্ট এই নভেলাটি মৃত্যুভাবনার এক কনফেশন বলে মনে হয় তবে তা প্যারাবল কিংবা স্বপের মত অদ্ভুতুড়ে।


বইটিকে চার তারা অনাসায়ে দিতাম বোধহয়, যদি ইংরাজি অনুবাদে পড়তাম। অনুবাদক মূল থেকে কাজ করেছেন ঠিকাছে কিন্তু কিছু জায়গায় জায়গায় আড়ষ্ট বাংলা লিখেছেন হয়তো টেক্সট আক্ষরিক অনুবাদ করতে গিয়ে। আরেকটু সাবলীল হলে বেশ চমৎকার হতে পারতো..

[Juan Araizaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

2 días y 80 páginas después. El primer libro que leo del autor, y que maravilla. Entendido a primera instancia como una distopia, nos muestra una realidad tremenda. Y que en las primeras páginas no nos dice muy bien de que va, pero que, poco a poco nos va mandando pistas acerca del salón de belleza, y del moridero. Cosas que se complementan.

No puedo explicarlo, pero el autor tiene una cierta belleza en su narrativa, es ese toque que te hace querer leer hasta los detalles más simples. Probablemente por la forma tan natural y cero forzada que tiene.

El personaje principal es bastante carismático a su modo, y cuando narra su vida te hace sentir como si fueras su amigo, en un interminable letargo invernal.

Probablemente no habrá reseña pero si algo más del autor.

[John Darnielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, hard, and precise. I recommend this book, and I recommend going into it without knowing what you’re in for.

[Fabio Luís Pérez Candelier · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Salón de belleza" de Mario Bellatin, novela corta que, valiéndose de la alegoría como recurso técnico, relata la historia de un estilista que ha decido convertir su salón en una especie de moridero para enfermos terminales ante la propagación de una extraña plaga; con un contraste interesante entre los peces que pueblan su pecera y los enfermos terminales, reflexionando, con simbolismos, sobre la belleza, la vida y la muerte.

[Pollo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un salón de belleza puede volverse un moridero, un amante de la noche puede convertirse en un cuidador de enfermos. No sabemos porque algunos nacen para brillantes Goldfish y otros para deambular en agua infecta. Esta nouvelle refleja bien el mundo e incluso se adelante a la sensación que se experimenta en la pandemia, con pequeños detalles que describen bien la decadencia de una persona, de un local, de un país, pero supongo que no era suficiente para emocionarme.

[Juan Naranjo · Rating 5 out of 5]

La vida de un peluquero travestí obsesionado con los peces tropicales que usa su salón de belleza como lugar para que puedan morir en paz las desamparadas víctimas de una plaga que asola una ciudad sumida en el caos me ha, absolutamente, fascinado. No solo es interesante la historia, sino que el estilo de esta brevísima novela navega entre lo crudo y lo poético, transmitiendo unas imágenes que a la vez son evocadoras y altamente perturbadoras. La acción tiene lugar en un espacio y tiempo desconocido, pero las dobles lecturas que puede tener la plaga de la que habla me hace pensar en un momento muy concreto de la historia reciente, en cualquier lugar del mundo. Una auténtica joyita escondida.

[Federico Sosa Machó · Rating 3 out of 5]

Se me ocurre leer este libro (cuento largo o novela breve) como un ejemplo de lo que podría llamarse existencialismo simbólico. La anécdota sirve al narrador para, al contar trazos de una vida y una particular manera de llegar al fin de ella, reflexionar acerca del sentido de la misma. Cierta atmósfera pesimista sobrevuela un texto que incluye lindos pasajes de un lirismo contenido, aunque creo que no se termina de cerrar una historia atractiva.

[Elena Papadopol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prima poveste a fost redata intr-o maniera destul de simpla, insa tema propusa a fost inedita.

Cea de-a doua naratiune a fost alambicata si uneori greu de urmarit - mi-a starnit totusi interesul pentru a cauta pe viitor si alte romane de acelasi autor.

,,[...] Il fascina faptul ca animalele sunt ceea ce sunt. Fiinta animala se prezinta intr-un mod transparent, fara opacitati capabile sa stirbeasca contondenta pe care trebuie sa o aiba un adevarat personaj sau o situatie literara."

[Mauricio Martínez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lo mío no es hacer reviews, menos de libros cortos, ya que siento que en esos casos, debería de decir mucho, pero con pocas palabras, para honrar la obra original, y eso es algo que siempre me costó.
Este libro es corto, lo leí en un viaje en ómnibus al trabajo, pero no por eso es menos, todo lo contrario.
Con pocas palabras dice mucho, y de cierta forma te obliga a sentirlo, junto al narrador, a pasar por su mente, y tratar de entenderlo.
El libro claramente toca temas relacionados a la exclusión social, la discriminación y la muerte, todo de una forma indirecta, de la misma forma que se hace un paralelismo entre la enfermedad, y lo que asumo es el VIH, nunca se la nombra directamente, y no es necesario hacerlo, el significado se entiende por el contexto.
Es un libro crudo de leer. Hay una constante relación con la muerte, la decadencia y un paralelismo con la belleza, lo cual suma al ambiente tétrico del libro.
Una hermosa lectura, altamente recomendable.

[Gohnar23 · Rating 3 out of 5]

#️⃣4️⃣4️⃣3️⃣ Read & Reviewed in 2025 💔🩸
Date : 🚀 Saturday, September 6, 2025 🚫🔻❌
Word Count📃: 21k Words 🧨🔪🎈

⋆⭒𓆟⋆｡˚𖦹𓆜✩⋆ >-;;⁠;⁠;€ᐷ °‧ 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 ·｡

( ˶°ㅁ°) !! My 17th read in "READING AS MANY BOOKS AS I CANNN 😢 cuz smth....happened.....irl.........😥" September ⚡

3️⃣🌟, gracefully weird (and also a bit like nothing)
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➕➖0️⃣1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣4️⃣5️⃣6️⃣7️⃣8️⃣9️⃣🔟✖️➗

I can admit this is very weird and bizarre but it's only a little bit unsettling but not that much. This is essentially a book about a beauty salon where it is transformed into a place where the victims of a current plague being scattered leaves themselves to die. Pretty weird but not that way in comparison to other books. It's not really doing anything that much and i don't even think that any of the characters are that memorable because even the main character is severely lacking on any particular sets of interesting characteristics that's such him apart from all of the people who just...DIE

I mean this IS experimental literature.....but i don't think that this is experimental ENOUGH because it's not dealing with anything extremely different from the ordinary, it reads like an ordinary book, just a weird one. There is not much to say as even the protest just repetitive, just ppl dying and then ppl die even more in the beauty salon and thats it.

[Sarah-Hope · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mario Bellatin's novel (novella, really) provides a reading experience that simultaneously humanizes and distances his central character. The unnamed narrator who ran a successful beauty salon, turns his salon into a home for the dying when a plague hits his community. There are clear parallels to the AIDS epidemic: dying people abandoned by families or lovers, no hope of effective treatment, and "residents" who have long been conditioned to see themselves as a sort of fringe society—a strong decorative fringe that challenges expectations about masculinity.

Before the plague, the narrator would go out cruising in the evenings with other gay, male cross-dressers. They tended to spend their time in the darker streets, but their dress and their attitudes were brilliant.

Now that the narrator has created "the Mortuary," he goes out seldom, particularly after he realizes that he, too, is dying of the plague. Instead, he considers the deaths of those around him, the faster and slower courses the plague can take, the value of living longer when that also means longer suffering.

This is a book offers a meditation that one can easily read in a single sitting, at least in terms of its length. Embracing what one has read, coming to terms with it, takes significantly longer.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

[Gastón · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un salón de belleza se transforma en Moridero (así, con mayúscula) donde hombres, y no mujeres, van a pasar sus últimos días de vida culpa de una enfermedad que los ataca. Allí dentro hay peceras. Muchas. Todas cuidadas y mantenidas por el protagonista. A través de esto se dibuja un ir y venir entre la vida de los peces comprendida desde lo humano y la vida del humano vista desde la del pez. Los animalitos más resistentes al cautiverio se desplazan, solos, como el narrador, y los otros, bonitos y coloridos, mueren dentro de esas paredes de vidrio. El salón de belleza para los peces más exóticos (y bellos), es la misma pecera donde el hombre, obligado por la enfermedad, va a morir. A su vez el dueño del lugar se mantiene "común" ante los ojos de los demás, aunque gusta de travestirse por las noches. Es ahí donde se siente él, donde cuida por misericordia, donde tiene poder y amor a la vez. Se transforma, así, en un pez común, pero resistente, que ve morir a los coloridos y exóticos humanos.

[Adriana Scarpin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Escrito pelo mezzo mexicano, mezzo peruano Mario Bellatin, Salão de Beleza é um dos livros a serem tratados no curso que estou fazendo sobre literatura pandêmica e será o assunto da aula da próxima terça.
Não vou dizer que é um livro fácil de ser lido, é curtinho, entre um conto longo e novela, mas de modo algum rapidíssimo porque o clima pesado e a crueldade presente nele são bem difíceis de deglutir, a dificuldade dele não reside na linguagem de como está descrito e sim no quê está descrito.
Não há nenhuma menção ao HIV ou AIDS durante a narrativa, mas tudo é bastante claro quanto ao que se refere à pandemia que mais era discutida em 1994, ano de seu lançamento.
É um livro que indico com veemência, mas que se saiba que vai ser uma leitura difícil e bem longe do clima de uma tarde de domingo ensolarado.

[theresa]

dissertation reading continues. i really enjoyed this one, such a unique narration and thought-provoking story in so few pages.

[Mauro Barea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vaya pedacito de historia nos brinda Bellatin.
Sin retruécanos ni florituras literarias rimbombantes, nos traslada a su mundo sin ninguna dificultad: cuatro paredes con acuarios y artilugios de belleza (me lo pude imaginar perfectamente ya que mi madre es estilista), y donde la muerte campa a sus anchas.

No desvelaré de qué trata la "peste", ya que es uno de los pilares de esta novela corta (o quizá, hasta cuento largo), pero también conectó conmigo por ciertas experiencias del pasado, precisamente con amigos estilistas de mi madre.
Se lee en un suspiro, y la historia junto a su narrador -incluyendo los simbolismos de los peces- se mantienen bastante bien hasta su abrupto final.

**Relectura que hace pensar que estamos ante una obra imperecedera, que no perderá vigencia en mucho tiempo. Recomiendo la lectura de la "edición definitiva" de Alfaguara que hizo en 2017 y que actualizó la conocida primera edición de Tusquets. Algunos cambios son notables.

[Aslıhan Çelik Tufan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kısacık ve çok etkili..
Zaten konu uzun uzadıya anlatmaya çok da müsait değil bence. Öyle zor bir konu ancak bu kadar net ve vurucu olurdu. Üstelik akvaryum ve balık metaforu ile ana kurgunun bütünleşmesi de bence çok başarılıydı.
Çok rahatsız edici, sizi gerim gerim gerecek, belki bi kahve içimlik okuyacağınız bir okuma yapayım derseniz buyrunuz

Keyifli okumalar.
#readingismycardio #aslihanneokudu #okudumbitti #2021okumalarım #okuryorumu #kitaptavsiyesi #neokudum #notoskitap #güzelliksalonu #mariobellatin

[Juampi Masolini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Novela breve, tal como se empeña el autor en describir a la existencia, equiparándola con los peces y su efímera belleza. Con una prosa que es una especie de agonía resignada pero bella.

[Martin Rondina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disfruté mucho este libro, es corto, pero con pocas palabras dice mucho, y nos deja el cerebro pensando en más de una oportunidad. Fue un placer toparme con este libro, espero leer más del autor!

[Luisa Geisler · Rating 4 out of 5]

gostoso, bem-feito, bem narrado, talvez se beneficiasse com algumas páginas mais, mas ao mesmo tempo não, então sei lá

[Dani Fernández · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

Si bien te lleva a pensar sobre algunas cuestiones, es un libro que no me terminó de cerrar del todo, me costó un poco su lectura por momentos.
Lo que destaco como llamativo a lo largo del libro es la ausencia total y absoluta de un Estado en medio de una peste que está acabando con los habitantes de una ciudad. Es un relato muy frío, que se cuestiona por qué nos han enseñado que ayudar a un moribundo es intentar apartarlo a cualquier precio de las garras de la muerte. Te deja pensando algunas cosas interesantes.
Otro punto significativo es el constante paralelismo a lo largo de todo el libro entre los moribundos que están pasando sus últimos días en el salón de belleza, y los peces que habitan las peceras del dueño del salón.

[AlexCVlector · Rating 5 out of 5]

‪No conocía a este autor y quedé gratamente sorprendido.‬
‪Aborda la soledad, la enfermedad y la muerte de una forma extraordinaria. Definitivamente buscaré leer más obras de Mario Bellatin.‬
‪#Leeresvivirmás ‬

[Rafa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Todo un descubrimiento. Tengo que leer más de este autor.

[El Convincente · Rating 4 out of 5]

Escribir sin pasarse ni quedarse corto. Quizás una de las mejores fórmulas para parir un clásico instantáneo.