A review by ralowe
The Transmigration of Bodies by Yuri Herrera, Lisa Dillman

4.0

yuri herrera's morbid crime novel is chill, loosely-limned and spare; i mean, you'd expect it to be, only 100 pages. some kind of unnamed outbreak has hit an unnamed mexican metropolis in *the transmigration of bodies* and affects his unnamed but sobriquet'd characters. i have to say that despite the ring of archetypes they somehow manage to not be entirely flat. herrera's thing is an unexpected twist to a sentence, it feels a little bit like he's holding back but not cheating. and this approach fits the potboiler genre. because i watch movies more than i read it reminded me of the dardenne brothers or abbas kiarostami or tsai ming-ling, actions the actors are tired of doing painted on a canvass of anime urban blankness. it's interesting how they were able to create such a feeling with so little, and all soaked with death. two families are squabbling over loved ones who may have died mysteriously, but it's mostly the universe dashing genre conventions to musty murky dust. for those who read faster than me, a intriguing diversion!