Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird

by Agustina Bazterrica, Sarah Moses (Translator)

A collection of nineteen dark, wildly imaginative short stories from the author of the award-winning TikTok sensation Tender Is the Flesh.

From celebrated author Agustina Bazterrica, this collection of nineteen brutal, darkly funny short stories takes 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. In “Roberto,” a girl claims to have a rabbit between her legs. A woman’s neighbor jumps to his death in “A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound,” and in “Candy Pink,” a woman fails to contend with a difficult breakup in five easy steps.

Written in Bazterrica’s signature clever, vivid style, these stories question love, friendship, family relationships, and unspeakable desires.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Audiobook, Fantasy, Anthologies, Adult

176 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2020

About the author

Agustina Bazterrica nació en Buenos Aires, en 1974. Es Licenciada en Artes (UBA). Ganó el Primer Premio Municipal de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires Cuento Inédito 2004/5 y el Primer Premio en el XXXVIII Concurso Latinoamericano de Cuento “Edmundo Valadés”, Puebla, México, 2009, entre otros. Tiene cuentos y poesías publicados en antologías, revistas y diarios. Escribe reseñas y artículos para distintos medios. En 2013 publicó su novela Matar a la niña (Textos Intrusos). Es co-coordinadora del Ciclo de Arte Siga al Conejo Blanco.

Reviews

[emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

creepy scary literary short book...i'm in heaven.

doing mini reviews for each short story, as i always do when i find myself with an excess of grit and wherewithal, like a single mom flipping houses on HGTV:


STORY 1: A LIGHT, SWIFT, AND MONSTROUS SOUND
oh hell yeah.

the best way, as in the most promising way, that a collection can start is with a story that you shouldn't like (in this case, one written in the second person) that you actually do like anyway (in this case, because it's jarring and descriptive and moshfeghian).
rating: 4


STORY 2: ROBERTO
okay, very weird...but also kind of a slay.
rating: 3.5


STORY 3: UNAMUNO'S BOXES
for all the girls who fantasize about getting serial-murdered by uber drivers with perfect incognito manicures.
rating: 3


STORY 4: CANDY PINK
another story in the second person (bad) but this one about the most interesting subject in the world (breakups) (good).
rating: 4


STORY 5: ANITA AND HAPPINESS
literally obsessed with the idea of a race of cute-girl-librarian aliens determined to achieve human happiness.
rating: 3.5


STORY 6: DISHWASHER
there's no active mental breakdown problem an expensive shopping mall purchase can't solve! and who is to say it's not alive anyway.

this one was thematically sayaka murata-y with more philosophical language...in other words, enough fun i can forgive the dialogue that is so bad it seems like an actual sin. mostly.
rating: 3.5


STORY 7: EARTH
there are certain topics that, fair or not, i will always find to be cheap trauma porn. certain topics that it feels like writers want to cover in a Unique Way to prove they're brilliant and edgy, and i always find unpleasant and redundant and lame.
rating: 2


STORY 8: PERFECT SYMMETRY
the crime fiction aspect of this: pretty dull. but the descriptions of crepe-making...now those were electric.
rating: 3


STORY 9: THE WOLF'S BREATH
this is a page-long story with an ending that is, without exaggeration, middle school creative writing level bad.
rating: 1.5


STORY 10: TEICHER VS. NIETZSCHE
not a typo.

is there a better sign for a character being amazing and evil than the descriptor "ex-wife"?
rating: 3.5


STORY 11: THE DEAD
agustina in her james joyce era.

is there anything worse than a below average literary story written from the perspective of a child...
rating: 2


STORY 12: ELENA-MARIE SANDOZ
gimmicky. but not not fun.
rating: 3


STORY 13: THE SLOWNESS OF PLEASURE
this collection is truly bringing a whole new meaning to the term "short" story.
rating: 3.5


STORY 14: NO TEARS
with every passing story i am losing my ability to Read Generously. the variance in merit among these is straight-up crazy.
rating: 3


STORY 15: THE CONTINUOUS EQUALITY OF THE CIRCUMFERENCE
i do actually really like the way these characters think. if every one of these stories was a third-person omniscient dialogue-less relation of some freak, we'd be golden.

also if they could stop reminding me of writing assignments i turned it at 11, and relatedly the fact that the internet is forever.
rating: 3.5


STORY 16: A HOLE HIDES A HOUSE
really bold move to start a short story off with a borges quote. now i'm starting off thinking about excellent short stories, which thus far in this collection feels like a risk.

and it was!
rating: 3


STORY 17: HELL
where i am at this point.

i just remembered that i didn't like tender is the flesh. and also why i didn't.
rating: 1


STORY 18: ARCHITECTURE
i can't tell if these are getting worse or i'm just getting tired of them, but it feels like at least 50% of each one is completely immature. this one, for example, is back to the really great writing but is also about a topic an edgy seventh grader would be like, hell yeah about.
rating: 3


STORY 19: MARY CARMINUM
okay ari aster!!
rating: 3.5


STORY 20: THE SOLITARY ONES
of course we're finishing on another second-person story. agustina, you're messing with me at this point.

and yet again, a surprise good one when i thought i would hate it. if this is supposed to teach me a lesson, i have to tell you, i am too self-centered for that to work.
rating: 3.5


OVERALL
there were some excellent stories in here, and also some extremely adolescent ones. the range in quality is mind-boggling, but somehow also made it more fun to read? like russian roulette for cowardly nerds.

or maybe i just love the excuse to complain.
rating: 3

(thanks to the publisher for the copy)

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘[O]f the possible constellations, in all the possible universes, this is the first glimpse of hell.’

A walk through subway tunnels shrouded in darkness; a final meal before murder; a sudden suicide recontextualizes a young woman’s life; another goes to great lengths for the body she wants; story after story, Agustina Bazterrica probes the darkness and makes us feel it’s chill creep up our spine in Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird. These 20 stories arrive just under 200pgs, making for bite-sized nightmares coming from all directions. While the stories where the darkness registers as upsetting don’t quite land as well as the stories that are less direct and more generally unsettling, the variety is quite exciting and there are plenty of stories that stick with you to compensate for the ones that fell a bit flat. Though with the range of tales here I suspect each reader will find different ones that really work for them. Wonderfully translated by Sarah Moses, this collection makes a great follow-up for fans of Bazterrica’s Tender is the Flesh who want a wealth of tiny terrors.

‘They love one another because they repulse one another.’

Bazterrica can find fright anywhere, and the only thing you can truly expect here is the unexpected. The ability to find horror in the everyday reminds me a bit of the magic Stephen King pulls in his early work, where even a sunny afternoon can fracture into trauma or a haunting and you are left feeling nowhere is safe. Such is the opening story, A Light, Swift and Monsterous Sound when a neighbor falling to his death possibly having intended to take the narrator into the grave with him causes a woman to realize nothing is safe. Of the many epigraphs to the stories—which made for excellent commentary on them—perhaps the most informative is the one from Jorge Luis Borges:

‘There is an hour of the afternoon when the plain is on the verge of saying something. It never says it, or perhaps it says it infinitely, or perhaps we do not understand it, or we understand it and it is as untranslatable as music.’

The best of the stories seem to embody that idea: and unnerving feeling that can’t quite be translated but lingers with you, recontextualizing everything in shades of fear. For me, its the vague stories that don’t need to punctuate the end that I enjoyed most, something I find Brian Evenson is excellent at or how much I enjoyed Ling Ma’s Bliss Montage and her style of unsettling uncertainty. Not that the others won’t be your thing, and there is quite a litany of ways to disturb the reader that comes flying from these pages.

In this way I also particularly enjoyed the stories in Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird that dealt with creeping horror that takes hold of your mind. There are stories such as Unamuno’s Boxes with the mindset of seeing everything as a potential true crime story about to unfold or the commentary on ideas of the “ideal body” can lead to toxic behavior obsessions to obtain it in The Continuous Equality of the Circumference where, in a twist, a woman decides ‘she needs her body to take on the round, infinite shape of a circle.’ Though the most predominant theme is the terrors that come from patriarchy and toxic masculinity, often featuring women subjected to gross and sexually driven aggression or assault, so be advised this can be quite the distressing collection. Some work better as a statement through a horror story than others, whereas some I just found to be rather fucked up without much else to say about it. Still, there are some sharp moments, like Roberto where a girl grows a literal rabbit in her pants much to the unexpected shock of her teacher who thought he was getting away with something asking to see it. I did quite enjoy Mary Carminum as well, where a lewd bet between two men lands them at the mercy of a sort of feminist, religious cult that puts them in their place. As earlier stated, the stories worked best for me when the horror arrives from the everyday moments that suddenly turn sinister and unveil a hell on earth. Perhaps this is also why the final story was one of my favorites.

‘[E]ach of us is a wolf devouring the other in exquisite eternity.’

Agustina Bazterrica’s short story collection Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird is a mixed bag of tales, though there are so many and in such a variety that it still manages to be effective and send shivers down your spine. This does deal with a lot of really heavy themes so reader be advised, though for the most part they manage to tell something greater than the trauma and critique society through the lens of a horror story. Sharp and haunting, this was a worthwhile collection.

3.5/5

[Flo Camus · Rating 2 out of 5]

[1.8⭐] 𝘿𝙞𝙚𝙘𝙞𝙣𝙪𝙚𝙫𝙚 𝙜𝙖𝙧𝙧𝙖𝙨 𝙮 𝙪𝙣 𝙥𝙖́𝙟𝙖𝙧𝙤 𝙤𝙨𝙘𝙪𝙧𝙤 es un volumen de diecinueve cuentos de terror escritos por Agustina Bazterrica y publicados en 2020. 


Como dije en una de mis recientes reseñas, quise seguir incursionando con Bazterrica ya que me ha encantado 𝘾𝙖𝙙𝙖́𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙚𝙭𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙨𝙞𝙩𝙤 y 𝙇𝙖𝙨 𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙞𝙜𝙣𝙖𝙨. Las califiqué con 5 estrellas y 4.8 respectivamente, así que, claramente, me han fascinado. Por desgracia, me temo que tenía mi vara muy alta y es por ello que no he podido conectar con estos cuentos. Creo que la clave para leer este compilado es no tener expectativas tan altas de él y, simplemente, disfrutar.
En mi caso, me sucedió que se me hizo un martirio poder leer los cuentos. La mayoría de los cuentos se me han hecho aburridos y no me han causado ningún efecto, han habido solo uno o dos que me han encantado, pero nada más. 
Tal y como leí en otra reseña, yo también he sentido que estos cuentos han sido escritos a modo de borradores y para practicar su estilo, lo ha hecho para soltar un poco la pluma. 


Finalmente, puedo decir que 𝘿𝙞𝙚𝙘𝙞𝙣𝙪𝙚𝙫𝙚 𝙜𝙖𝙧𝙧𝙖𝙨 𝙮 𝙪𝙣 𝙥𝙖́𝙟𝙖𝙧𝙤 𝙤𝙨𝙘𝙪𝙧𝙤 no ha sido, para mí, una lectura de mi agrado. La mayoría de los cuentos no me han gustado y sentí que perdí el tiempo. De todas maneras, leería 𝙈𝙖𝙩𝙖𝙧 𝙖 𝙡𝙖 𝙣𝙞𝙣̃𝙖 que es la última obra que me queda pendiente de Bazterrica.

[megs_bookrack]

Y'all, it's with a heavy heart that I report I am pulling the plug on this one. It's a big ole' DNF for me.



I was so excited for this collection and really wanted to love it. I started it last night and read the first four stories, making it, I think to around 20%.

While it is a very short collection, even the thought of picking it back up fills me with dread. I just can't do it. Out of the first four stories, if I had been rating them individually, three of them would have been 2-stars and one of them would have been a 1-star.


I cannot connect with the author's writing style in any way. It says nothing really of this collection; it's personal taste. I know a lot of Readers will pick this up and love it and I can't wait to read their glowing reviews.

Sadly, that's just not my journey with this one. For those who care about such things, I am changing the dates so it doesn't count towards my 2023-reading goal. Also, I am not leaving a star rating, as I feel that would be unfair to this author since I didn't complete the collection.

Thank you to the publisher, Scribner, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I'm so sad this didn't work for me and wish this collection all the success upon its U.S. release!

[Jasmine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird is a translated collection of cruel and shocking short stories laced with dark humour.

After being equally repulsed and captivated by Tender is the Flesh, I requested this short story collection as soon as I saw it. I rarely read short story collections because I prefer to spend more time with characters. But I had high hopes that this would be a fascinating read, and it certainly was.

The stories themselves are fairly short, ranging from one to no more than ten pages. Except for one, I gave them all three to five stars, averaging four stars. Overall, the stories are quite memorable. In one, a woman wants to become a circle and will do whatever it takes to achieve her desired shape. Cue lots of blood and the eating of round-shaped foods. In another, a man suspects his girlfriend is an alien, and he’s okay with that.

The stories deal with shocking, bloody, and dark themes.

If you haven’t yet read Tender is the Flesh, this will give you a taste of what the author’s writing is like. I don’t reread much, but I’d definitely consider rereading these twisted stories.

Thank you to Scribner for providing an arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

https://booksandwheels.com

[daph pink ♡ · Rating 2 out of 5]

At first, it was enjoyable, but it quickly wore off. I would have given it a generous three stars if there had been a balance between the excellent and poor stories, but I'm going to settle for a two because towards the end it also lost my interest and got so boring that I dreaded picking it up.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went into this book without knowing anything at all just because Agustina wrote it. Here goes nothing. lol

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

This book has a collection of short stories written by the author of "Tender is the Flesh", including a story about a woman whose neighbor falls to his death on her back patio to the story who makes a drastic choice after a nasty breakup with the boyfriend she loves literally to death.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

This was my first introduction to Agustina and I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. I'm not normally into horror novels but I wanted to open my horizons in a way since I typically stick with fantasy novels.

I immediately purchased her other books and that normally doesn't happen. I'm looking forward to reading them as well and even purchased the audiobooks, which normally doesn't happen either. I love listening to the audiobook so I'm looking forward to that.

I will say, I wish there was a trigger warning for the first story since there was a violent death that I was not expecting. That's on me, though, because I knew this was a horror novel from the get-go. I should have expected it, right? lol

I might go back and read this one again, which I normally don't do either. I guess this says a lot about Agustina's writing style, doesn't it? I normally don't read books more than once unless I'm reading it to remind me of what happened before going to the sequel.

I would recommend this book if you're into horror novels and have already recommended the book to a close friend of mine. I'm sure I'll do it again, which doesn't surprise me. I can't wait to read her other books!

[Gareth Is Haunted · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird is a stunningly diverse collection of 20 tense, shocking and brutal short stories from Agustina Bazterrica.

This was a beautifully crafted collection, it is like every single word was placed to perfection which creates such a beautiful and evocative reading experience. Each of these stories delves deeply into the workings of the human psyche and conjures up our darkest fantasies or infiltrates our most deranged nightmares.
Within moments of starting the first of these stories, I was left in awe of Bazterrica's beautifully haunting and razor-sharp writing. I have never before read something which manages to be incredibly macabre yet still works to remain humourous and curiously relatable.

A wonderfully exciting collection of horrifically dark and dangerous short stories. This is one not to be slept on!

Thanks to Pushkin Press and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC copy for review.

[inciminci · Rating 5 out of 5]

It really is a special kind of pleasure to read really short, bite-sized stories which nevertheless succeed in capturing strong moments, like Agustina Bazterrica does in Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird. A pleasure which I in fact would compare to reading poetry, as all twenty of these mini stories are written with utmost wit and make you return and re-read a passage or two which touches you particularly strongly.

That's how I ended up, many times over in the past week at the subway station to work, and instead of flowing with the crowd, I stood in a corner re-reading the story I just finished in the train with a big smile on my face. And when I came home in the evening, I couldn't wait to read them again.

Bazterrica has already proven with her achingly devastating cannibalistic dystopia Tender is the Flesh that she can write a poignant novel. Now she captivates her readers with these absolutely delightful mini stories too.

Some of these twenty stories (of which, by the way, I can't decide which one is the black bird and which ones the claws) are incisive snapshots – first the dentures, then the body of a suicidal upstairs neighbor falling on someone's patio; an incarcerated man cooking crêpes in the last moments of his life; the attack of a wolf; three old women walking arm in arm on the street carrying a bird in a cage (I may have found the titular bird after all...) - little snapshots which nevertheless tell big stories.

Some others are more elaborate – devastation hiding behind a child's naiveté, comedy hiding behind a girly step-by-step guide to cope with a breakup, oddity disguised as Pablo who thinks his girlfriend Anita is an alien; the sadness of the adventure of a depressive woman who hoped to cure herself...

My favorite of this collection is Teicher vs. Nietzsche, in which a fanatic Boca fan hates and loathes his ex-wife's cat Nietzsche, but surprisingly Nichito has a few tricks up its sleeve.

I was a little worried that past the mid-year mark I still hadn't found a book that I could call my favorite, that changed when reading this one and I think this is the best book I have read this year so far.

[Sadie Hartmann]

Full review soonish. There were some standouts, some shockers, and some that were just ok. I’ll run it all down Monday 7/24

[karen]

i won a goodreads giveaway!

and i accidentally dumped a whole doggie water bowl into my bag and now this book is SWOLLEN and DRENCHED.



lgm

[mj · Rating 2 out of 5]

are we sure this is the same author who wrote tender is the flesh? 🤨

maybe it was the translation but this was just bad friends. so so bad. it was like she had a bunch of different ideas for scenes in short stories and just threw them together in one book. some of them were just so pointless? nothing happened and that’s fine i’m good with a no plot all vibes kind of read but they were just descriptions of things? the only reason it gets two stars is because i didn’t violently hate it and there was some potential I think. two of the stories were just not necessary, it felt like it suddenly occurred to the writer that they hadn’t included some form of assault and just threw it in.

deeply disappointing. i give it a boot. 🥾

[Emma Griffioen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty disappointing considering I gave Tender is the Flesh 5/5 stars. I really like Bazterrica's writing style but I didn't particularly enjoy most of these stories.

[Janelle Janson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tender is the Flesh is one of my favorite horror novels so I immediately had to read this short story collection. With each tightly crafted story, Bazterrica delves into themes of death, loss, murder, and suicide. Her writing is evocative and haunting, drawing the reader into macabre worlds that are still strangely relatable. This book is a must-read for fans of diverse and dark fiction, showcasing Bazterrica's exceptional ability to shock and provoke while capturing the complexities of the human experience.

[Meike · Rating 2 out of 5]

20 stories over just 178 pages - and I could not for the life of me finish this parade of tidbits. Much like Bazterrica's TikTok sensation Tender Is the Flesh, these texts tend to evoke real gruesomeness and aim for peak punchiness, but to what end? There is an emptiness at the core, and the collection couldn't captivate me.

[Alwynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

First published in 2020, Argentine writer Agustina Bazterrica’s collection echoes concerns encountered elsewhere in her work: from the damage wrought by capitalism to the threat of patriarchy, to the myriad forms of violence and disorientation that might lurk beneath the surface of the seemingly mundane and too often aimed at women or children by predatory men. Bazterrica seems fascinated by themes of alienation and the possible disconnect between surface perception and underlying reality; and she’s often fiercely invested in the kind of atmospheric but gruesome, feminist body horror I associate with writers like Mónica Ojeda and Sayata Muraka. Unsettling accounts of murder and abuse resurface across Bazterrica’s narratives, in “Unamuno’s Boxes” a taxi driver who shares the famous author’s name may or may not be a serial killer; in the striking “Earth” a child kills her abusive father; while “A Hole Hides a House” comments on poverty and the trafficking of young girls. Sometimes Bazterrica’s writing takes on aspects of the surreal as in her twisted fairy tale “Mary Carminum” or delves into the realms of the bleakly absurdist – on prominent display in entries like “Dishwasher” which reads like a parody of a fifties romance starring actors like Doris Day. Standouts like “Candy Pink” present an ironic view of the aftermath of a breakup in a style that reminded me at times of Dorothy Parker; and I was unexpectedly drawn in by the darkly comical tones of “Teicher vs. Nietzche” an unlikely convergence of cat, jilted football fan and elements of Nietzche’s philosophy. Bazterrica’s worlds are riddled with cruelty and exploitation, sometimes fantastical but grounded in her awareness of the rampant inequalities and fault lines of contemporary Argentine society. It’s a place in which children and animals are particularly vulnerable and, here, a place peopled by characters too often caught up in obsession – unable to deal with their bodily existence as in “The Continuous Equality of the Circumference” in which a woman has an unusual response to the pressure of conforming to impossible beauty ideals. But like so many collections this can be quite uneven, some pieces like “The Wolf’s Breath” are more gesture than finished story, while others feel strangely slight despite the seriousness of their subject matter. Translated by Sarah Moses.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Pushkin Press for an ARC

Rating: 3 to 3.5

[Meli · Rating 4 out of 5]

El primer cuarto del libro me pareció excepcional, tanto que creo que lo quemé porque hasta me atreví a pensar que por primera vez en mi vida estaba leyendo una antología perfecta de pe a pa.

Pero claramente no fue así, ni debe serlo porque, más allá de mi pensamiento inicial, considero que la gracia de las antologías es la variedad y acá hay de todo. Relatos que son una absoluta joya, relatos fuertísimos, irónicos, llenos de significado, algunos que te apuñalan y hacen que se te tambalee un poquito el mundo. Y relatos pretenciosos o densos o que simplemente no me gustaron, o quizás no me gustaron en este momento y me maravillen si alguna vez los releo. Esa también es la gracia de las antologías.

Mis favoritos fueron Roberto, Rosa Bombón, Elena-Marie Sandoz (alucinante) y Las solitarias (este me perturbó especialmente porque soy la chica que siempre tiene que correr para alcanzar el último subte las noches húmedas y solitarias de verano).

[HorrorBabe911 · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of short weird and scary stories I liked the first half then the second half of the book just got like boring and weird. It’s an okay fast read the stories are about 2/5 pages each so it goes by fast. The weirdest one that creeped me out was the circle lol like wth.

My fav stories here were: CANDY PINK & Roberto
The others were disturbing or boring :/

[Dona's Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

HAPPY PUB DAY 🥳 Tuesday June 20 2023!

Thank you to the author Agustina Bazterrica, publishers Scribner and Simon & Schuster, and as always NetGalley, for an advance digital copy of NINETEEN CLAWS AND A BLACK BIRD.

I actually read this collection twice. My first time through, I knew it was smart, creative, and I really liked it. But I also just didn't know how to review it as a collection. So the second time through, I took some notes. My aim: to minimally review each of the stories within the book to give you, potential read, maximum exposure to its spectrum of subject and brilliance.

1. "A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound"
This one is a little hard to follow, but it's a parable (sort-of) about gossip. What's the difference between a suicide and someone falling to their death on the balcony two storeys down? A nosy neighbor.

2. "Roberto"
I'll never look at small rodents or metaphors for genitals the same way ever again. This story is one of my top 3!

3. "Unamuno's Boxes"
The form of this story holds up the narrative, maximizes the suspense and brilliant irony. The punchline: Better off dead than old.

4. "Candy Pink"
I love when writers write suicide as an actual characteristic rather than a trashy trope or plot device. Bazterrica has a bad habit of this, so it's nice to see she's got the range for both.

5. "Anita It Happens"
There is only one woman in the world for Pablo? Sometimes the narrative structure of these stories dilutes the meaning a little.

6. "Dishwasher"
This story about stigma and keeping up pretenses brilliantly uses subtext to make its point. "Jane never would have imagined that machines could panic."

7. "Earth"
The trajectory of this tragedy stole my breath away. It is a story about a child and her mother, half of which relationship is, by necessity, below average.

8. "Perfect Symmetry"
He knew that no woman was cheap and that every dish was delicious. The secret was in the particulars that made them unique. p50

9. "The Wolf's Breath"
Another linguistic puzzle or word game.

10. "Teicher vs. Nietzsche" This story appears to be a private joke for existential philosophers. For readers who aren't familiar with the theories and theorists at hand, the piece could be inaccessible.

11. "The Dead" Told from the perspective of a vengeful and angry young person, a little convoluted, though the theme of domestic violence is certainly clear.

12. "Elena-Marie Sandoz"
This story has an incredibly inventive oroboros shaped logic, which results in a circular form. Stories like this are usually a trip, but I loathe when authors use suicide as a plot device.

13. "The Slowness of Pleasure"
Wow, I've been doing art museums all wrong! I love this eerie tale about the connection between a piece of art, the object of the painting, and a woman admiring the painting. This piece is spooky, sensual, and powerful! Top three!

14. "No Tears"
It's a funeral, and I mean *anybody's* funeral, and this sweet lady will cry because she wants to!

15. "The Continuous Equality of the Circumfrence"
Several of the stories in this collection are linguistic puzzles, or word games. This is another one, and it's quite creepy fun, as the main character is fixatedon the shape of her body. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Bazterrica became distracted by the centralidea of this story on day, and wrote this just to work out the -- is it geometry? anatomy? anametry? Whatever, great story.

16. "A Hole Hides a House"
A surreal and heart-rending story about child wives and how they live. Trigger warnings galore for this one.

17. "Hell"
A very sad, surreal story about the keeping of wild species as pets. Trigger warning for animal cruelty and death.

18. "Architecture"
I'm not too sure about this one. It's definitely about architecture.

19. "Mary Carmium"
This very freaky story appears to be about cults and cult abduction and indoctrination. One of the best things about it is the pervasive sense of absurdity and preposterous. The narrator knows everything that's happening is ridiculous, but he's as much an observer as we are! This story is one of my Top 3!

20. "The Solitary Ones"
A fantastic classic scary story, complete with a twist ending!

Rating: 🐇🐇🐇🐇.5 / 5 inuendos
Recommend? Yes!
Finished: June 2 2023
Format: Digital, Kindle, NetGalley
Read this if you like:
📃 Short fiction
🧾 Flash fiction
🫠 Surrealism
👤 Existentialism
🙃 Irony
🧌 Weird fiction

[Paula Mota · Rating 4 out of 5]

#outubrohispânico
#lêseteatreves

3,5*

HELL
A constellation burns inside the stone. MAROSA DI GIORGIO

Three old women are walking together. Arm in arm, they weave a symbiosis outside of time. Their bones, which cradle the precariousness of their bodies, are mineralized under their skin. The liquid in their veins is embroidered, the pearl lacework forming designs that link them in their weariness. They love each other because they repulse each other. The women levitate, heavy in the trilogy that nurtures them. They appear motionless, their starched blood delaying all action, but they walk on, so slowly it’s absurd. The seconds that immortalize them come apart in the silence of the burning morning.

De Agustina Bazterrica tentei ler “Tender is the Flesh”, mas canibalismo talvez seja uma das barreiras que, por questões de estômago, não consigo transpor na literatura. “Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird” é um livro já de outra natureza e, pela diversidade de temas inerentes aos contos, aqui se vê uma vez mais a fibra de que são feitas as autoras argentinas sem, no entanto, saírem do reino do macabro e do incómodo. A escrita de Agustina Bazterrica é negra e dilacerante como o pássaro e as garras do título, mas por vezes ela incute-lhe um lirismo inesperado que a faz ascender ao patamar dos bons autores.
Entre estes 20 contos, elejo como os meus preferidos “A light swift and monstrous sound” (uma mulher vê o vizinho a cair morto no seu pátio), “Roberto” (uma menina alega ter um coelho preto entre as pernas e o final é espetacular), “Anita and Happines” (um homem convence-se de que a namorada é um ser alienígena), “No Tears” (um embate entre uma mulher que vai a funerais porque não gosta de chorar sozinha e um homem que lá vai para erradicar as lágrimas), “The Solitary Ones” (uma verdadeira história de horror de uma mulher que apanha o último comboio na véspera de Ano Novo).

A light swift and monstrous sound-5*
Roberto-5*
Unamuno's Boxes-3,5*
Candy Pink-2*
Anita and Happiness-4,5*
Dishwasher-3*
Earth-3*
Perfect Symmetry-3*
The Wolf’s Breath-3*
Teicher vs. Nietzsche-4*
Dead-4*
Elena-Marie Sandoz-4*
The slowness of pleasure-3*
No tears-5*
The Continuous Equality of the Circumference -4*
A Hole Hides a House -3,5*
Hell-4*
Architecture -2*
Mary Carminum-3*
The Solitary Ones -4,5*

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compulsive and haunting little gems of delicious grotesquery

Following her Tender is the Flesh, this is another bold offering showcasing Bazterrica's grotesque and macabre imagination, though the stories here are more horror-adjacent than the nauseating pushed-to-the-logical-extremes of Flesh.

With a strong urban vibe and recourse to issues of death, sexuality and gender, these veer between moments of dark, dark humour to the claustrophobic classic scariness of 'The Solitary Ones'.

The tales vary in length and in narrative voice: those articulated through the tones of young girls worked especially well for me. And there's a nice eliding between the dreadfulness of relationships and something more figurative: I'm thinking of the edgy 'Candy Pink' here.

I especially appreciate the unexpectedness of Bazterrica's vision, not just at the narrative level but also in the word choices through which the stories are expressed (thanks also to the translator).

So, compulsive and haunting little gems of delicious grotesquery - many thanks to Pushkin Press for an ARC via NetGalley.

[Coos Burton · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5

A pesar de que, de momento, prefiero mil veces su novela "Cadáver exquisito", creo que estos relatos son muy buenos, muy oscuros y tétricos. No veo la hora de leer más de Agustina.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

A couple of years ago, I reviewed Bazterrica’s Tender Is the Flesh, a dystopian horror novel in which cannibalism becomes commonplace. “Brutal but brilliant,” I called it. That’s what I was hoping for from this collection of 20 of the Argentinian author’s speculative short stories. Unfortunately, I found the death-drenched work uneven, but there were a few individual stories and recurring elements that I appreciated.

In “Unamuno’s Boxes,” a woman becomes convinced that her taxi driver is a serial killer; in “Anita and Happiness,” Pablo suspects his lover is an alien. In both of these, the imagined identity is so strongly rooted that it reflects, or even alters, the reality. My favourite line of the book came from the latter: “human beings are a mere parenthesis between two unknowns.”

There are a few cases of poetic justice here, such as when a football obsessive decides to take out his feelings on a cat and instead gets his comeuppance. Two other stories, “Roberto” and “Earth,” include revenge for child sexual abuse – they have mighty satisfying conclusions. Along with those two, the stand-out of the collection for me was the final story, “The Solitary Ones,” which is the closest to straight-up horror and features a young woman riding the subway alone when the electricity goes out. It’s one of four second-person narratives; that’s always an interesting point-of-view. (The rest are roughly equally split between first and third person.)

My qualms were about a couple of unpleasant repeated topics and the vague or generic nature of many of the remaining stories. Several involve suicide, which is not problematic in and of itself – “A Light, Swift and Monstrous Sound” is a strong opener in which a woman finds her elderly neighbour dead on her patio – but in two places it’s a too-convenient way of concluding a story about someone with mental illness. Two late stories apply menacing imagery about religion. Perhaps I’m overly sensitive about such things, but I prefer a more balanced depiction.

The title makes intriguing reference to other creatures, particularly birds, but apart from a couple of sinister appearances and one stereotyping page about the threat of a wolf, it doesn’t live up to that promise. Although I cannot wholeheartedly recommend Bazterrica’s short fiction, you might want to seek out select stories. Meanwhile, I would urge you all to read Tender Is the Flesh, which also engages with the question of the ethical treatment of animals.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

To be published June 20, 2023. I received an Advance Reader's Edition of this book of short stories through a Goodreads Giveaway. This book was translated from the original Spanish. The author has packed great emotional depth in a tightly contained amount of words. Most stories share themes of death, loss, murder, suicide and the New Year. The story entitled "Candy Pink" stood out the most for me. Altogether, this collection is well crafted and intriguing.

My thanks to the author, Augustina Bazterrica, and the publisher, Simon and Schuster, for my early copy of this book.

[Jan Agaton · Rating 3 out of 5]

The one about circumference, "Dead" and "Roberto" were the stories that stood out to me. The rest were either boring, not my cup of tea, or possibly translated poorly?

[Rachel (TheShadesofOrange) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars
I adore this author's novel, Tender is the Flesh, so I was interested in this short story collection even if I don't read a lot of the format. The prose was excellent. The stories were incredibly short which made for easy reads, but not necessarily the most memorable experience. It was a fun read, but perhaps not the strongest long term impression.

[Sera Nova · Rating 2 out of 5]

Trigger warnings: suicide in 2nd person, and lots of pedophilia in the child’s perspective.


Some of these short stories were pretty fun and dark, but after the 3rd child being raped by an adult man, I just needed to put this down. Idk why people are not talking about it. I’m sorry, as a victim of a pedophile, I really didn’t enjoy a lack of trigger warnings.

[Brandy Leigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unpopular opinion clearly based on the Goodreads rating: I really liked this collection of short stories.

Give it a try if you like more of a fever dream piece of literature.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stop yourself. Breathe and lower the firearm. Contemplate your thoughts. Clear your our mind and focus on observing it. Recognise yourself as Mona Lisa, surrounded by crystal giraffes inside a field of sunflowers, trying to hunt shaggy tigers to deliver to Enrique and the Chinese lucky cat, who are living in the purple castle where the plastic watches melt in the flames of the love he and the woman’s voice feel, the two of them looking at you and laughing from atop the Eiffel Tower, while Pepino dances with the translucent couple falling out the window right on to the sad man’s head, and the man whispers to Penelope Pitstop: “I love you more than Racing.” Yell “ENOUGH” and pull the trigger. The instant the bullet perforates your skull, envision a feeling of calm that’s pink on colour, candy pink.

Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird (2023) is Sarah Moses’ translation of Agustina Bazterrica’s short story collection, originally assembled in this form in 2020, although some of the pieces date back to the early 2000s.

As the title might suggest the collection includes 20 short stories - indeed short-short stories, the average length less than 8 pages and the longest 20. But these are stories that punch beyond their page length, indeed like the best short stories their brevity adds to their impact.

Many are dark, although others are there are humorous such as in the brilliantly deadpan Anita and Happiness, whose male protagonist is convinced his girlfriend is an alien spy, and others combine both such as the black humour of Candy Pink from which the opening quote, the closing words of the story, is taken - that this quote makes sense in the context of the 14 page story shows how much the author can include in so few pages.

This is a varied and unsettling collection, although a common theme of alienation runs throughout and almost all the stories hit their mark.

Elena-Marie Sandoz comes with a epigraph from Thomas Bernhard but has more of a feel of Alfred Hitchcock or Dhal's unsettlingly dark tales, as do the Solitary Ones and Mary Carmimum. Whereas Architect and Hell are distinguished by their crystalline prose. And Tiecher vs Nietzsche starts with a man trying to kick his ex-girlfriend’s cat (oddly named Nietzsche) as part of his pre match ritual for watching a Boca Juniors match on TV, only to end up paralysed. The kick he attempts is itself a homage the fastest goal ever scored in Argentinian football, that by Carlos Dantón Seppaquercia, 5 seconds into a game in 1979.



And Roberto, a story that appears to be heading in one direction before a twist in the other, can be found here on the publisher’s website: https://pushkinpress.com/read-an-excl...

Recommended and an International Booker call.

[pibelector · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me encanta la pluma de esta autora. Me devoré los cuentos en dos días y quedé con ganas de mas. Los mas cortos son los mas contundentes, increíble lo que logra con tan pocas palabras...