A review by sidharthvardhan
Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin

5.0

Most of these short stories have a sort of nightmarish qualities about them, much like another Intentional Booker nominee from author, Fever Dreams (but 'Fever Dreams' had a far better execution IMO and, to be honest, should have won International Booker that year). Sometimes the nightmarish quality is due to environment or because of the perspective of a child narrator while others really have a somewhat Kafka-like dream-realism (unpredictable sequence of surreal events) with an which is the thing I enjoy most about this author. The unease one feels during a nightmare is common to the narrators of all the good stories in here. 'Headlights', 'Butterflies', 'Preserves", 'toward the civilization' etc are some of the best ones.

There a few less enjoyable stories (the titular story, incidentally, was one of those I enjoyed less), but the 5-star ones are too difficult to ignore.

A bad sample, bad not because it is a bad story, but because it doesn't have this nightmarish quality, can be read here.