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chloazo 's review for:
Variations on the Body
by María Ospina
A melancholy collection of short stories with some beautiful imagery and a good ability to infuse seemingly ordinary things with sadness. The stories feel intensely personal in the sense that they grapple with the resulting fallout of life in Colombia after its tumultuous internal conflicts, and the author clearly holds an acute and nuanced understanding of the conflict and its impacts on the minds and bodies of Colombia’s women. Unfortunately, the pain and trauma and suffering of such a conflict is missing almost entirely for me, which makes the writing of these short stories beautiful but largely empty of the real emotion that underscore them. This is not the author’s fault of course, but simply a fact of an international audience. While I found Policarpa to be an extremely compelling story (with a fair amount of helpful context), some of the other stories, like Collateral Beauty or Fauna of the Ages, failed to capture my attention even though their initial premises were interesting. It felt like the stories wandered sadly through their landscapes, hinting at sadness and trauma but never fully conveying the emotion. I was more unsettled than anything else after reading Saving Young Ladies, and while Occasion was sad, I didn’t feel like Zenaida was developed enough to really understand her situation or her emotions. If the intent was to focus on the blending of trauma and the body’s physical response to it, I may have to do some rereading because the point felt too subtly for me to fully understand.