Diving Board

by Tomás Downey, Sarah Moses (Translator)

“Opening Diving Board is like waking in a white room with no doors or windows. A question resonates as one reads these How did Tomás Downey place me here so perfectly, and why is it that I don't want to leave?”—Agustina Bazterrica, author of Tender is the Flesh and The Unworthy

Tomás Downey writes from the edge of the abyss. A little girl disappears midair; a horse grows from a seed; a war widow receives a visit of condolence, over and over and over again. In “The Astronaut” a man has become weightless, bobbing around on the ceiling, nauseated every time he is brought down and tethered to the earth. But the question here is not “how” or “why,” it’s “what happens next?” The astronaut wonders “Will I burn like an asteroid or drown in the void of space?” just as all of Downey’s stories reside in that threatening, destabilizing moment when all connection is lost. The world is filled with an ever-thickening mist, an old love haunts the living, making fruit rot in the bowl, and resolution isn’t offered or even sought—the human condition is queasy, fretful, absurd. All we can hope for is the leap into the unknown.

Genres: Short Stories, Horror

171 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 7, 2025

About the author

Tomás Downey (Buenos Aires, 1984) es guionista, egresado de la ENERC, y autor de una novela aún inédita. Actualmente, trabaja en un nuevo libro de relatos. Acá el tiempo es otra cosa es la obra ganadora del Primer Premio en género cuento del Fondo Nacional de las Artes, edición 2013. El jurado estuvo integrado por José María Brindisi, Mariana Enriquez y Guillermo Saccomanno.

Reviews

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really varied collection of haunting, weird stories that dissolve into rather than reveal their mysteries.
A longer review can be found here (I foolishly got the name of the book wrong on the title—it's corrected but fixed into the URL): https://roughghosts.com/2025/09/26/sl...

[Regan]

Tomás Downey has mastered the chill in the air, the prickling at the back of your neck; in Moses’s translation, colloquial and keen, these stories could be told by your neighbor or cousin. Recurring instances of the surreal—disappearances, repetitions, the supernatural and unexplained—heighten the characters’ more routine circumstances and recalibrate the way they see the world. Here, the gore, rot, and dread are tools for examining how we deal with the real horrors in our lives.

Full review on the Asympotote blog! https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog...

[Andy Weston · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is quite a variety here among the 19 stories that make up this collection, but a few of them are genuinely disturbing. Violence happens in quite unexpected circumstances and is described with a deadpan tone that chills. Those are the best of the collection for me.

A ghost appears in Sensitive Skin, mentally destroying his ex girlfriend by appearing around her apartment at random times. When she meets a new partner, that man, too, starts to mentally decline, but tge girlfriend refuses to acknowledge that the ghost might have something to do with it. She simply tries to ignore it.

The title story is typical of the collection, and arguably the best. It concerns a father and daughter on a routine trip to the swimming pool. Nothing unusual happens, Downey is meticulous in his rendering of banal details, but because it’s midway through the book, and we have got to know his style by now, the tension builds, and the story certainly delivers in its final paragraphs.

Another excellent and disquieting story is The Place Where Birds Die, which opens with.. “We didn’t bury the first one deep enough.” The location’s relationship to the deaths of local birds foreshadows larger threats to the family at the story’s heart.

The stories all seem like a clip from a longer piece of writing. They are all short, 8 pages or so. Little character description is given, and the situation takes shape over the first page or so. They end abruptly. Downey leaves us wanting more.. and I do.. I’m throughly looking forward to what he does next.

[Tayler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Totally gripping

[Kydra Mayhew · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you love an eerie short story collection, this one is for you! I don’t always enjoy short stories and often feel like I wish the story had more to it, but these stories all felt well rounded. Some I loved more than others, with the titular story being my favourite (and one I’ve been telling other people to read). All the stories are very atmospheric and tense, and you probably shouldn’t read them before you go to bed.

Thanks to Invisible for the advanced copy!