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The Strange Case of Rachel K
Three early stories about myth, power, and sex by the acclaimed author of The Flamethrowers.
An explorer’s unknown whereabouts keep a queen in anticipation; a faith healer’s illegal radio broadcasts give hope to an oppressed people; a president’s offer of ice cream surprises a prostitute expecting to turn a trick—the three short fictions gathered in The Strange Case of Rachel K build into a vision that is black-humored, brutal, and beautiful. Written prior to the publication of Kushner’s acclaimed debut novel Telex From Cuba, these stories, like Roberto Bolaño’s Antwerp, burst forth with the genesis of her fictional universe. From the mythical “Great Exception,” to the ominous “Debouchment”—originally published in her too-short-lived journal Soft Targets—to the sexy and noirish title story, Kushner saddles up for a journey into the wilds of modern fiction.
An explorer’s unknown whereabouts keep a queen in anticipation; a faith healer’s illegal radio broadcasts give hope to an oppressed people; a president’s offer of ice cream surprises a prostitute expecting to turn a trick—the three short fictions gathered in The Strange Case of Rachel K build into a vision that is black-humored, brutal, and beautiful. Written prior to the publication of Kushner’s acclaimed debut novel Telex From Cuba, these stories, like Roberto Bolaño’s Antwerp, burst forth with the genesis of her fictional universe. From the mythical “Great Exception,” to the ominous “Debouchment”—originally published in her too-short-lived journal Soft Targets—to the sexy and noirish title story, Kushner saddles up for a journey into the wilds of modern fiction.
96 pages, Hardcover
First published February 10, 2015
35 people are currently reading
1173 people want to read
About the author
Rachel Kushner
48 books2,678 followersRachel Kushner is the bestselling author of three novels: the Booker Prize- and NBCC Award–shortlisted The Mars Room; The Flamethrowers, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times top ten book of 2013; and Telex from Cuba, a finalist for the National Book Award. She has been awarded prizes and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Guggenheim Foundation. Her novels are translated into 26 languages. She lives in Los Angeles and wants you to know that if you're reading this and curious about Rachel, whatever is unique and noteworthy in her biography that you might want to find out about is in her new book, The Hard Crowd, which will be published in April 2021. An excerpt of it appeared in the New Yorker here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20....
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 96 reviews
October 3, 2019
Cuban History
The first of these three stories, ‘The Great Exception’, is a Borges-like counterfactual fake that tells the truth of Cuban national origins in the sexual fantasies of Queen Isabella. From the island’s discovery by Columbus, who is killed, cooked, eaten, and assimilated by the aboriginal inhabitants, to its development as a decaying tropical Paris, to its virtual annexation (along with the Kingdom of Hawaii) by the United States, the constant theme is sexual vice. The ‘exception’ in question seems to be the accidental discovery of the Americas. Or perhaps it refers to this latter military/political event, an exception to the myth of American exceptionalism. They did, of course, what any big country does to smaller ones - they enslaved it in imperial rule.
‘Debouchment’ covers the subsequent period in Cuban history, “the era after the Spanish ate the parrots to extinction (while the natives stuck to grilled banana heart), and before the Russians came, with their Brutalist architecture and their smoked pig’s fat.” This is a time, after the abolition of slavery, of the rationalisation of continuing racial and economic oppression. Deterioration continued but now “with amber Lalique windows, and the addition of cheval-de-frise on the low walls of Spanish colonial buildings, to prevent vagrants from sitting.” And the essentials of Cuban life remained constant: “syphilis, tobacco, and trees with fruit whose flesh is the pink of healthy mucus membranes.” But this all stopped abruptly when Castro’s bandits bombed the Pan-American Club.
The title story of Rachel K is a case study of the depravity of 1950’s Cuba. A former French Nazi masquerading as a diplomat tangles with a faux-French stripper with painted-on faux-net stockings. She is a prostitute who “makes a life out of twilight.” Like the country itself “The boundary between her private life and public life has blurred, as has the boundary between engaging her body only in intimate pleasures with people she trusts, and using it as an object she owns.” ‘K’, after all, is not just for Kushner, but also for what one uses in German to spell the name of the country.
In Havana the French Nazi “found occupied Paris all over again.” Better than Paris because it wasn’t occupied by other soldiers in the midst of war but by the corporate executives of international companies on the make. “It was occupied Paris, with Americans in Cadillacs instead of Germans in Mercedes.” Rachel ignores him, then teases him, then engages him in intimate conversation during which the “Nothingness” that is in these people, their un-mappable emptiness, continues to leak away into the recorded national past.
The first of these three stories, ‘The Great Exception’, is a Borges-like counterfactual fake that tells the truth of Cuban national origins in the sexual fantasies of Queen Isabella. From the island’s discovery by Columbus, who is killed, cooked, eaten, and assimilated by the aboriginal inhabitants, to its development as a decaying tropical Paris, to its virtual annexation (along with the Kingdom of Hawaii) by the United States, the constant theme is sexual vice. The ‘exception’ in question seems to be the accidental discovery of the Americas. Or perhaps it refers to this latter military/political event, an exception to the myth of American exceptionalism. They did, of course, what any big country does to smaller ones - they enslaved it in imperial rule.
‘Debouchment’ covers the subsequent period in Cuban history, “the era after the Spanish ate the parrots to extinction (while the natives stuck to grilled banana heart), and before the Russians came, with their Brutalist architecture and their smoked pig’s fat.” This is a time, after the abolition of slavery, of the rationalisation of continuing racial and economic oppression. Deterioration continued but now “with amber Lalique windows, and the addition of cheval-de-frise on the low walls of Spanish colonial buildings, to prevent vagrants from sitting.” And the essentials of Cuban life remained constant: “syphilis, tobacco, and trees with fruit whose flesh is the pink of healthy mucus membranes.” But this all stopped abruptly when Castro’s bandits bombed the Pan-American Club.
The title story of Rachel K is a case study of the depravity of 1950’s Cuba. A former French Nazi masquerading as a diplomat tangles with a faux-French stripper with painted-on faux-net stockings. She is a prostitute who “makes a life out of twilight.” Like the country itself “The boundary between her private life and public life has blurred, as has the boundary between engaging her body only in intimate pleasures with people she trusts, and using it as an object she owns.” ‘K’, after all, is not just for Kushner, but also for what one uses in German to spell the name of the country.
In Havana the French Nazi “found occupied Paris all over again.” Better than Paris because it wasn’t occupied by other soldiers in the midst of war but by the corporate executives of international companies on the make. “It was occupied Paris, with Americans in Cadillacs instead of Germans in Mercedes.” Rachel ignores him, then teases him, then engages him in intimate conversation during which the “Nothingness” that is in these people, their un-mappable emptiness, continues to leak away into the recorded national past.
August 10, 2018
A Work of Seductive Details
This small book is a collection of three early short stories by Rachel Kushner.
They seem to be modest exercises in style, or tentative efforts to design settings for her fictions. Together, as she hints in the preface, they form “a work of seductive details”, which evidences her desire to “run alongside, but with [her] own version of discovery and progress,” in which she captures “the feeling of knowing”.
In the first story, “The Great Exception”, the narrator tells a tale of her grandparents’ arrival and meeting in Cuba. The style reminded me of Borges and a tropical Calvino.
The second, “Debouchment’, describes her mother’s life in Havana "in this in-between era, after the Spanish and before the Russians...and their Brutalist apartments”. The descriptions are so evocative, you can almost feel the moisture of rain and sweat, hear the songs playing on the radio, and smell the blend of local fragrances (breadfruit trees, “fetid jungle breath" and brothel perfumes and makeup).
In the eponymous third story, the narrator gets a job as an exotic dancer in the Cabaret Tokio’s Pam-Pam Room. “She eludes the term ‘whore’ with the smoke and mirrors of ‘demimondaine’." She has a superficial relationship with a French Nazi (“a French SS officer - memoirist, minor aristocrat, dreamer of extremes”), because they find each other attractive, alluring and elusive in equal parts:
This story is the longest, and is probably the source of comparisons to Roberto Bolano, to whom I would add Anais Nin, Rikki Ducornet and maybe Henry Miller. Like them, Kushner writes with an intimate understanding of the seductiveness of location, circumstances and language:
This small book is a collection of three early short stories by Rachel Kushner.
They seem to be modest exercises in style, or tentative efforts to design settings for her fictions. Together, as she hints in the preface, they form “a work of seductive details”, which evidences her desire to “run alongside, but with [her] own version of discovery and progress,” in which she captures “the feeling of knowing”.
In the first story, “The Great Exception”, the narrator tells a tale of her grandparents’ arrival and meeting in Cuba. The style reminded me of Borges and a tropical Calvino.
The second, “Debouchment’, describes her mother’s life in Havana "in this in-between era, after the Spanish and before the Russians...and their Brutalist apartments”. The descriptions are so evocative, you can almost feel the moisture of rain and sweat, hear the songs playing on the radio, and smell the blend of local fragrances (breadfruit trees, “fetid jungle breath" and brothel perfumes and makeup).
In the eponymous third story, the narrator gets a job as an exotic dancer in the Cabaret Tokio’s Pam-Pam Room. “She eludes the term ‘whore’ with the smoke and mirrors of ‘demimondaine’." She has a superficial relationship with a French Nazi (“a French SS officer - memoirist, minor aristocrat, dreamer of extremes”), because they find each other attractive, alluring and elusive in equal parts:
“Seduction, he knew, was a slew of projections , disguises, denials…[Her painted-on black fishnet stockings] were an enticement in the guise of a barrier, like a beaded curtain hung over a doorway says ‘come in’, not ‘stay out’, its beads telegraphing that what’s inside is enchanted and special.”
This story is the longest, and is probably the source of comparisons to Roberto Bolano, to whom I would add Anais Nin, Rikki Ducornet and maybe Henry Miller. Like them, Kushner writes with an intimate understanding of the seductiveness of location, circumstances and language:
“And so here I am, in a burlesque club below the Tropic of Cancer, in this damp city where dreams are marbled with nothingness.”
July 17, 2015
Strange, quirky but well written. Three stories of which my favorite was the first but the third, which is the title story was interesting as well. Scenes that were like snapshots, the story takes place during Battista's regime when Rachel, a dancer of sorts, tries to seduce a French Nazi. Good but it is the first story that sticks in my mind.
August 10, 2018
Quality, Not Value
Also, in this in-between era, after the Spanish, who cooked their parrots so slowly they remained alive as they were removed from the oven, and before the Russians, who took the scrubbers off the chimneys and let the red dust rain down: a dictator's estate, with artificial waterfall and presidential barbershop, a divorcée's mausoleum, with amber Lalique windows, and the addition of cheval-de-frise on the low walls of Spanish colonial buildings, to prevent vagrants from sitting.With writing like this, how could I not be thrilled? Rachel Kushner's three little vignettes of Cuba in the decadent years just before the revolution are utterly superb. This is my first experience of the author, but it makes me eager to read her novels, Telex from Cuba (2008) or The Flame Throwers (2013), which I actually own. This is five-star writing if I ever saw it. Kushner has been compared to Roberto Bolaño, which I certainly see in the title story here—a reworking of a Cuban noir movie which happens to have the same name as the author's own. Her technique of approaching her subject with abrupt dashes from every possible direction, like a terrier barking in brilliant prose, reminds me also of my favorite book about Cuba in this period, Adios, Happy Homeland, by Ana Menendez.
But what is it about marketing? To sell three short stories, totalling 60 small pages, for just under $20? That is 33 cents per page! And then, having printed them in a really rather beautiful volume that nestles in the hand, to cover the whole thing in a simply hideous jumble of a cover with virtually illegible lettering—do they have a suicide wish? Reading Kushner's brief introduction to the stories (as brilliant as any of the writing in the stories themselves), it is clear that these pieces are a decade old, dug out from a drawer. I happened to find out that the leading male character in the title story, a real French former Nazi called Christian de la Mazière, also appears in Telex from Cuba. So if the title story, which is longer than the other two put together, should turn out to be merely a study for the novel, readers of that book will find almost nothing here that is new.
My advice: get this from your library and read it overnight as I did; the writing is simply superb. But buyer beware, be very much aware!
November 30, 2016
Cuba, on our minds with the death of Fidel Castro, has been on Rachel Kushner's mind for some time, as this slender book of evocative but elusive stories illustrates. “The Great Exception,” prompted by Kushner’s reading of a book of history, is her sketch of a “version of discovery and progress.” It concerns a Portuguese admiral and a queen and the finding of the Americas, and later a Colorado woman who, inspired by kinetoscope visions, travels to Cuba. The admiral ends up boiled in a pot, and the woman falls in love with a man who makes cheap, faked-up films, who spends all her money. “Debouchment” presents a set of fragmentary descriptions centered on a scene in a nightclub in an unnamed tropical country during an “in-between era,” after the Spanish and before the Russians. A banned faith healer broadcasts illegally on the radio at night, as do “bearded ruffians” in the mountains; the nightclub scene, already in pieces, ends in a blast. In the title story, the longest of the three, a Frenchman who during the war had fought for the Nazis but managed to cover up that history once it ended, is now established in Havana. At a nightclub he frequents, he dallies with a young dancer who also has a false past. It’s 1952; the characters exist in a moving present that goes with them from day to day but isn’t headed anywhere.
The stories are flecked with eccentricities and ironies and recurring motifs and almost-jokes. The admiral conceives of the world as shaped like a pear, or a violin. Because he had claimed that the natives did so, the Spanish take to cooking and eating parrots; at one point the text evokes the pun “parrot-cide” without explicitly stating it. Mirrors and violence, syphilis and smoke and strong fragrances contribute to the atmosphere, but we catch glimpses of loveliness, such as the harbor “whose shore was paved with pulverized white diamonds.” Some samples of the text: “This was Christmastime, and there were humans hanging in the trees beyond the security fence” (from “Debouchment”). “In Havana there was no war, no snow, no shame. There was, instead, softness, flesh and decadence masking some kind of horror, like makeup over a bruise” (from “The Strange Case of Rachel K”).
The stories are flecked with eccentricities and ironies and recurring motifs and almost-jokes. The admiral conceives of the world as shaped like a pear, or a violin. Because he had claimed that the natives did so, the Spanish take to cooking and eating parrots; at one point the text evokes the pun “parrot-cide” without explicitly stating it. Mirrors and violence, syphilis and smoke and strong fragrances contribute to the atmosphere, but we catch glimpses of loveliness, such as the harbor “whose shore was paved with pulverized white diamonds.” Some samples of the text: “This was Christmastime, and there were humans hanging in the trees beyond the security fence” (from “Debouchment”). “In Havana there was no war, no snow, no shame. There was, instead, softness, flesh and decadence masking some kind of horror, like makeup over a bruise” (from “The Strange Case of Rachel K”).
October 1, 2019
I am a fan of Rachel Kushner although I am discovering she is not loved by all. I didn't realize these stories were set primarily in Cuba but looking closely at the book jacket, the Cuban flag is recognizable. I read this in an hour. It is a portrayal of the decadent side of colonialism. One image that struck me was the French Nazi SS officer reflecting that the American Cadillacs roaming the streets of pre-revolution Cuba reminded him of the Nazis driving Mercedes through Paris. Chilling. While the time period is not defined, it can be estimated by the entrance of Batista (1940). The critical details is that this is post-Spanish American War and pre-Cuban Revolution of 1959. Rachel K is not the author, but coincidentally, as Kushner points out, has the same name. She was a prostitute found murdered in a Havana hotel room. A short book, full of intriguing details of the crimes of colonialism, and a portrayal of Havana I'd not seen before.
April 7, 2025
The title story is basically a watered down version about the zazou dancer Rachel K from Kushner's brilliant novel Telex from Cuba. I would still say though that all three of these stories were better and more accessible than the overly dull The Flamethrowers, which was too artsy for its own good.
January 19, 2019
This small volume, published in 2015, contains three short stories written by Kushner before her first novel Telex from Cuba was published in 2008. The stories and the preface are very good. Kushner's writing is, as always, superb. I love her writing even when I don't quite know what she's saying, at least on the first read! If you've read Telex from Cuba, you'll recognize the characters in the third story -- The Strange Case of Rachel K. The three stories are linked chronologically, although the first - The Great Exception - is many years earlier. Collectively you could even say they tell a story of about syphilis! While all were good, I think I liked the shortest - Debouchment - the best. I had to look debouchment up to find out its meaning and then ponder using it for what happens in the story. I wonder if I've got it right!
November 30, 2020
This is a treat, a real doggy biscuit, for those of us who encounter Kushner’s novels first and want more. Others have spoken of this as a book much like Bolaño’s Antwerp, in that both that book and this one allow the reader to see the kernels of other books by these authors and how their longer works came to fruition from sketches, observations, images that stuck, and character studies. I love the eccentricity of these three “slight stories,” as another reviewer has called them, and their playfulness. I wouldn’t recommend this book for your first Kushner experience, though—for that, I couldn’t recommend The Flamethrowers enough.
November 8, 2015
Time for another "amuse bouche'/AB2, and here Rachel Kushner gives us "Rachel K." Unfortunately, just today while staring at my morning mirror I swore not to madly mock meta. (Signed copies of this review are available for only $99.99, limited time only.)
April 2, 2015
Rachel Kushner is one of our best writers, and she proves it line by line.
August 30, 2018
I just recently discovered Rachel Kushner. She writes quite eloquently. I am looking foreword to reading more of her work. I recently read her latest novel The Mars Room and enjoyed that also.
May 12, 2025
strange and beautiful little trip with complicated sentences, and some film noir taste. lovely.
March 15, 2015
a slight but dense collection of interwoven stories about street level cuban politics at various points of the twentieth century. the titular story is the strongest, focusing on identity and gender performativity of a burlesque dancer as she attempts to seduce a french nazi during the beginning of batista's reign. the global politics serve as a landscape here while the intimate details of the portrait are drawn out by our main characters. there's some real good dialogue here that blossoms into beautiful depictions of desire and fear. the intro compares it to slow learner by pynchon, but that's only really accurate insofar as you can see kushner getting her sealegs here. would earn a higher grade with a more significantly emotive ending, and perhaps a hundred more pages of the character stuff that kushner knocks out of the park so easily.
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December 11, 2016I read the first story, which was perhaps cleverly yet vaguely allegorical or something; I really had no idea what was going on. When I started the second story and found it to be equally confusing, I bailed. Not my cup of tea or maybe I am not clever enough but no thank you, I'm good. Wonderful sentences, though. I just wish I knew what it all was supposed to be about.
June 28, 2015
If you've read Kushner's first novel, Telex from Cuba, a lot of the material in these stories will look familiar. Her writing is so good. If I hadn't already read her novels, I might rate this more highly simply on the merits of her prose.
May 9, 2019
A wonderful collection of short stories set in the Telex From Cuba universe. It might help to read Telex From Cuba before reading this collection, since most of the settings and characters are the same, but I can see it also serving as a good kind of prologue to Telex From Cuba.
April 22, 2015
Kushner is a major talent but these short stories don't add up to a book. Read the title story, easily the best of them, in the New Yorker
March 8, 2021
Three short stories make up this slim collection. The title story, the third and last, contains elements of the first two, almost as if the earlier stories are missing fragments of the third. As if the whole collection were one long short story. But a little redundant.
Still, it was nice to experience Kushner’s writing for the first time. Her style isn’t what’s unique about her writing; that would be her use of metaphor and fine focus for detail that illuminates the characters. Also, there is an air of dirt or seediness to her world and its characters, and this is a good thing.
I like Kushner and think I’m ready for one of her novels. I just wish there was more to this collection, and what is here was better worked out.
Still, it was nice to experience Kushner’s writing for the first time. Her style isn’t what’s unique about her writing; that would be her use of metaphor and fine focus for detail that illuminates the characters. Also, there is an air of dirt or seediness to her world and its characters, and this is a good thing.
I like Kushner and think I’m ready for one of her novels. I just wish there was more to this collection, and what is here was better worked out.
December 31, 2020
Har et lidt ambivalent forhold til Rachel Kushner: På den ene side dykker hun altid ned i nogle super spændende historiske temaer: Den cubanske prærevolutionære historie med Casinoer, snuskede kabareter/stripbarer og seksuel frigørelse med fokus på det burleske og det uudgrundelige krydret med et sylespidst humoristisk sprog. På den anden side, og det var også problemet med Flammekasterne, forbliver historien og plottet altid underligt uforløst og ufuldstændigt, så man forlader historien historien med en mærkelig tom fornemmelse. Dvs. godt tænkt og godt planlagt, mindre godt udført.
September 9, 2019
"He wasn't sure whether he wanted a made-up story or a true story, or even what the difference was. People talked about character, a defining sort of substance. But deception was a substance as well, as relevant and admirable as what it covered. If it covered anything, that is. He had great empathy for affects and evasions". This short collection of vibrant stories from Rachel Kushner exudes the charm, the decadence, and the deception of colonial Cuba. Kushner layers falsehoods and play-acting with truth and criticism. In this slim volume, characters who often might be bit players - a parrot, a courtesan - become protagonists. Kushner's precise language is incredible evocative and cutting. What a terrific joy to read this!
December 5, 2015
It seems despite her massive sales and critical reputation readers are up and down about Kushner's output. This is the first of her books that I came across, practically packaged as a collectable (hardcover, small in size and pages) and published by New Directions.
I loved this book to the point of coming down with writer's envy. Its experimental analysis of the "discovery" of the Americas and the notable and less-than documented characters that make up the "new world's" decadent milieu reads more like poetry (prose poetry) and is also at times non-linear. My speculation is that Kushner thought this was too way out a read for the mainstream market and she (or her agent) approached the more literary-minded New Directions.
Having said all that when I tried Kushner's "The Flame Throwers" (which I won't review here) I was surprised to find that I put that book down (forever) about half way through. She states that "The Strange Case of Rachel K" (or parts of it) just poured out of her, which would seem to be a better approach for her, writing in short concentrated bursts rather than in the over-wrought novel full of pretentious and unsympathetic characters that makes up "The Flames Throwers".
I loved this book to the point of coming down with writer's envy. Its experimental analysis of the "discovery" of the Americas and the notable and less-than documented characters that make up the "new world's" decadent milieu reads more like poetry (prose poetry) and is also at times non-linear. My speculation is that Kushner thought this was too way out a read for the mainstream market and she (or her agent) approached the more literary-minded New Directions.
Having said all that when I tried Kushner's "The Flame Throwers" (which I won't review here) I was surprised to find that I put that book down (forever) about half way through. She states that "The Strange Case of Rachel K" (or parts of it) just poured out of her, which would seem to be a better approach for her, writing in short concentrated bursts rather than in the over-wrought novel full of pretentious and unsympathetic characters that makes up "The Flames Throwers".
July 18, 2019
So I decided to read this because I liked The Flamethrowers. Unfortunately, this seems to have been published for just that reason. It would have been better to wait for her to write two or three more stories.
There's a three-page Preface, which is basically Kushner explaining what inspired each story. The stories all take place at least partly in Cuba.
"The Great Exception" - Two stories set centuries apart but linked by a fatal disease. (22 pages)
Kushner was a bit too cute in the first one. The second one was mildly interesting. Three stars.
"Debouchment" - An oddly-written story set at a vague time before Castro took over. (8 pages)
I couldn't get into this one due to the writing style. Too much vagueness. Two stars.
"The Strange Case of Rachel K" - A dancer / courtesan in 1952 Havana. (34 pages)
This is easily my favorite of the three, though I don't like the ending. Four stars.
There's a three-page Preface, which is basically Kushner explaining what inspired each story. The stories all take place at least partly in Cuba.
"The Great Exception" - Two stories set centuries apart but linked by a fatal disease. (22 pages)
Kushner was a bit too cute in the first one. The second one was mildly interesting. Three stars.
"Debouchment" - An oddly-written story set at a vague time before Castro took over. (8 pages)
I couldn't get into this one due to the writing style. Too much vagueness. Two stars.
"The Strange Case of Rachel K" - A dancer / courtesan in 1952 Havana. (34 pages)
This is easily my favorite of the three, though I don't like the ending. Four stars.
June 5, 2017
According to the New York Times review:
While I found the prose tasty on a line-by-line level, I found the stories dull and hard-to-follow. This may reflect more on me than the author... Still, it doesn't bode well when it takes a full week to read such a slim book.
"The Strange Case of Rachel K" delves into themes of ownership and agency, reinvention of self, the mystery and pull of exoticism, and the inevitable letdown once the exotic turns out to contain the same banal discontent as the familiar. The subtlest, most engaging story in the book, it yields new discoveries with every reading.
But whether the collection would still hold up with a weaker story in its place is difficult to say. The first two stories are steeped in atmospheric but florid language, and rarely feel like anything but the juvenilia they are-
While I found the prose tasty on a line-by-line level, I found the stories dull and hard-to-follow. This may reflect more on me than the author... Still, it doesn't bode well when it takes a full week to read such a slim book.
December 17, 2018
I gave this top ratings because the writing is often brilliant, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend to readers expecting a novel. It seems like something between poetry and fiction, and the preface describes the extraordinary circumstances and inspirations for the three short-but-connected works (80 pages total). There are exceptionally evocative passages ("Blue lights illuminate her white skin, white like a body filmed underwater. A body glimpsed across a night-lit swimming pool, or in the glaucous depths of dreams.")
Kushner creates an impressionist vision of Cuba: from conquistadors to casinos and brothels. The post-WWII and pre-Castro period is particularly vivid. It's inventive, at times beautiful, at times horrifying and a bit crazy. I'm not sure it's a story, but it's certainly art, and it stays with you.
Kushner creates an impressionist vision of Cuba: from conquistadors to casinos and brothels. The post-WWII and pre-Castro period is particularly vivid. It's inventive, at times beautiful, at times horrifying and a bit crazy. I'm not sure it's a story, but it's certainly art, and it stays with you.
October 15, 2015
Having been previously mesmerized by The Flamethrowers and Telex from Cuba, I came to The Strange Case of Rachel K very excitedly, and on reading just the author's preface, found myself thinking that Rachel Kushner might have become my favorite living novelist. Her uncanny instinct for prose shines through in this short collection of three vignettes as well; that I was relatively underwhelmed by it has only to do with it being something of an afterthought to Telex. Can't wait for what's next.
April 26, 2015
Rachel Kushner provides the core of what would become her debut novel Telex from Cuba and her prose which is not concerned with the projected image of seduction but the actual mirroring itself. Nabokov once wrote about mimicry which would rise to the authenticity; Joyce attempted the synthesis of everything in his literary output; both concentrated on the final process. Kushner is more concerned with the process, not the ultimate result, which moves and swirls around the individual to give the appearance of a stable self. More @ http://parsnipsandstones.tumblr.com/p...
December 12, 2017
A few sorta connected stories. This is what I'd call slight stories, rather than short stories, because they just feel like there's not enough there to constitute a satisfying story. Somebody on the blurb compared this book to Bolaño's Antwerp, which I hated for being too slight, and these stories do resemble Bolaño's "novel" a bit.
The title story is the most worth reading, although to read the entire collection only take an hour or two, so it's hard to argue that any of it is not worth reading.
The title story is the most worth reading, although to read the entire collection only take an hour or two, so it's hard to argue that any of it is not worth reading.
July 13, 2019
if you crave Borges like i do, then go acquire this now.
THE GREAT EXCEPTION - short, but epic. Spain, Cuba, disease, etc...
THE DEBOUCHMENT - linked to the first story; she mentioned in the preface about writing an entire book like this; hope she does!
THE STRANGE CASE OF RACHEL K - the longest and best of the three; this whole short collection is so incredible that i want to read it again.
*bought this at the H*rv*rd C**p on Brattle Street, Boston which has the most impressive fiction section i’ve ever seen - entire collections of authors like Abe, forgotten Franzen, even Gas & Gaddis... not to mention many Daulkey Archive works. I was in heaven.
THE GREAT EXCEPTION - short, but epic. Spain, Cuba, disease, etc...
THE DEBOUCHMENT - linked to the first story; she mentioned in the preface about writing an entire book like this; hope she does!
THE STRANGE CASE OF RACHEL K - the longest and best of the three; this whole short collection is so incredible that i want to read it again.
*bought this at the H*rv*rd C**p on Brattle Street, Boston which has the most impressive fiction section i’ve ever seen - entire collections of authors like Abe, forgotten Franzen, even Gas & Gaddis... not to mention many Daulkey Archive works. I was in heaven.
June 19, 2015
"The Strange Case of Rachel K" reads like a movie. Kushner presents blocks that feel like cinematic snapshots. In 3 sections she transports the reader from time to time to time; place to place to place. Character development is sparse, leaving it to the reader to inject his or her own history and psychography. Ultimately we meet "from Paris, the zazou dancer Rachel K!" And all of the pieces previously presented fall into play. Delightful, visceral, quick read that plays out like a film in one's imagination.
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