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hearingtrumpet 's review for:
The Transmigration of Bodies
by Yuri Herrera, Lisa Dillman
Not as poetic and obscure as Signs Preceeding the End of the World, but the novella still has some strangeness to it that I am now guessing is a trademark of Herrera's writing. The story again has a myth-like quality that elavates the text and renders it timeless. At the same time its very much rooted in a gritty, violent reality where bodies are battered, bruised, invaded and dragged around in an empty city ravaged by an unknown pandemic (for something written over a decade ago the closed pharmacies and "no masks" signs are too real). This sense of human existence barely going beyond carrying these aching and wanting bodies around and hurling them at each other is only amplified by the fact that almost no one has a name, but a moniker: The Redeemer, the Mennonite, the Dolphin, the Three Times Blonde. When Baby Girl's body is returned to her family her friend calls them out: "You know she didn't like to be called that. She had a name." Her plea is recognized, but the name is never given. Although the story ends with a resolution, the cycle does not. The Redeemer receives another call and the transmigration of bodies continues.