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A review by samsam123
Blow-up, and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar, Paul Blackburn
4.0
I am so happy to have read this collection. I am a huge fan of Cortazar now.
His work is often playful and lays with the reader’s expectations. He is adept at upending and bending narratives in familiarly unfamiliar ways. He is an author who will not give you all the answers, and I love him for that.
My Fourier short stories were his shorter works. The longest piece The Pursuer was really not to my taste. I’m just not a fan of a drug addled musician/artist’s tale. Although the last story, Secret Weapons,which is longer than many of the stories is really great as an exploration of trauma as well as the underpinning of violence contained in intimacy.
My favourite stories were the following:
House Taken Over; The Distances; The Idol of the Cyclades, Letter to a Young Lady in Paris; The Night Face Up; Bestiary; and the Secret Weapons.
To be honest, I thought this was gonna be a solid five star read for me. However, the English translation could have been smoother. The sentence structures called to itself that this was indeed a translation, and it sorta takes you out of the text. Also Blow-Up and The Pursuer were two stories that really could have been cut from the collection, imho.
His work is often playful and lays with the reader’s expectations. He is adept at upending and bending narratives in familiarly unfamiliar ways. He is an author who will not give you all the answers, and I love him for that.
My Fourier short stories were his shorter works. The longest piece The Pursuer was really not to my taste. I’m just not a fan of a drug addled musician/artist’s tale. Although the last story, Secret Weapons,which is longer than many of the stories is really great as an exploration of trauma as well as the underpinning of violence contained in intimacy.
My favourite stories were the following:
House Taken Over; The Distances; The Idol of the Cyclades, Letter to a Young Lady in Paris; The Night Face Up; Bestiary; and the Secret Weapons.
To be honest, I thought this was gonna be a solid five star read for me. However, the English translation could have been smoother. The sentence structures called to itself that this was indeed a translation, and it sorta takes you out of the text. Also Blow-Up and The Pursuer were two stories that really could have been cut from the collection, imho.