Little Snapshots - Reviewing Agustina Bazterrica's Story Collection "Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird"

It really is a special kind of pleasure to read really short, bite-sized stories which nevertheless succeed in capturing strong moments, like Agustina Bazterrica does in Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird. A pleasure which I in fact would compare to reading poetry, as all twenty of these mini stories are written with utmost wit and make you return and re-read a passage or two which touches you particularly strongly.

That's how I ended up, many times over in the past week at the subway station to work, and instead of flowing with the crowd, I stood in a corner re-reading the story I just finished in the train with a big smile on my face. And when I came home in the evening, I couldn't wait to read them again.

Bazterrica has already proven with her achingly devastating cannibalistic dystopia Tender is the Flesh that she can write a poignant novel. Now she captivates her readers with these absolutely delightful mini stories too.

Some of these twenty stories (by the way, I can't decide which one is the black bird and which ones the claws) are incisive snapshots – first the dentures, then the body of a suicidal upstairs neighbor falling on someone's patio; an incarcerated man cooking crêpes in the last moments of his life; the attack of a wolf; three old women walking arm in arm on the street carrying a bird in a cage (I may have found the titular bird after all...) - little snapshots which nevertheless tell big stories.

Some others are more elaborate – devastation hiding behind a child's naiveté, comedy hiding behind a girly step-by-step guide to cope with a breakup, oddity disguised as Pablo who thinks his girlfriend Anita is an alien; the sadness of the adventure of a depressive woman who hoped to cure herself...

My favorite of this collection is Teicher vs. Nietzsche, in which a fanatic Boca fan hates and loathes his ex-wife's cat Nietzsche which she left at home when leaving him. On the night when Boca plays against River, cunning Nichito shows surprisingly the tricks up its sleeve.

I was a little worried that past the mid-year mark I still hadn't found a book that I could call my favorite, that changed when reading Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird and I think this is the best book I have read this year so far.