Bleak, takes-no-prisoners accounts of the less carnivalesque side of Brazilian society. An obvious cross-media comparison is the movie City of God, but Fonseca is more reined-in in his storytelling style (although since this is a translation, one never knows). Think Carver, Chandler, even Hemingway. Good stuff, if hardly a beach read. ( )

Rubem Fonseca is the South American Cormac McCarthy, or vice versa. This collection of short stories is stark, intensely disturbing, and so well written, even in translation. From the Type A exec who runs people down to relax to the man who experiences drowning while on an examining room table, each story reaches into the dark places of the human soul. Be prepared for quite a ride when you read this collection. ( )

Dark. Gritty. I'm fascinated with stories about Brazil and this is yet another to add to my list. Bravo to Open Letter Books for translating and beautifully publishing this collection of short stories. ( )

It’s not often that a story collection blindsides me. Afterall, writers, both mystery and literary, devote much time to crafting stories so readers expectations are artfully managed – we receive just enough information to make us feel smart in anticipating plot twists and character downfalls, but not so much information that we aren’t delightfully or thrillingly surprised every once in a while. Rubem Fonseca breaks all those polite rules in The Taker and other Stories. By the time you reach the end of the opening story “Night Drive” you know you’re in for a rollercoaster-in-the-dark kind of ride – no predicting what will happen next. In “Account of the Incident” – if you think you’re going to find out what happens to the victims of a bus crash, forget it. Instead, you watch with horror as victims are left in a ditch while the bystanders fight over the butchering of the now-dead cow that the bus has hit. And what happens with the residents of an old age home revolt for a decent meal in “The Eleventh of May?” Not pretty. Turns out when they’re not being medicated, these old guys have a lot of kick left in them: “The Director opens the door. Pharoux grabs him, Cortines gets a stranglehold on him. Pharoux pricks the Director’s face with the knife, drawing a drop of blood.” The Taker and Other Stories will stand out in my summer reading because its stories were dark and unpredictable, filled with lots of characters you don’t want to spend much time with, but feel delightfully bad because you did. ( )

Most of the stories in this collection deal with Brazil's notorious poverty gap, on one side the wealthy over priviledged on the other the poor. The most striking example is from one of the early stories about a banker, whose idea of stress relief seems to be hit & run attacks.

As many other reviewers have noted, its pretty short on smiles, being almost entirely powerful & brutal tales of the worse parts of human nature. The stand out for me though has to have been the peculiarly dystopian tale of the old folks home.

Go read it, it'll make you think, but it almost certainly won't make you smile ( )