Reviews

Sacred Families: Three Novellas by Andrée Conrad, José Donoso

taitmckenzie's review against another edition

4.0

While at first glance this series of three stories seems to be a satire of the interconnected lives of several bourgeoisie Mediterranean families, what comes eventually surfaces is the idea that even the most stalwart of people's lives can suddenly be plunged into frightening and marvelous surreality. Donoso is in rare form in these tales, continuing to develop the themes that haunted "The Obscene Bird of Night," really his obsessions: bodies being taken apart (particularly de-sexualized), objects and spaces disappearing from under one's gaze, and the ability of the self to become the other. Most enjoyable was the story of a teenager obsessed with whistling Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit in order to keep people from assigning him a real identity.