Symmetries
by Luisa Valenzuela
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Valenzuela's view of life in Latin America is set far from reality, where cops in Buenos Aires are afraid of dogs. In the tradition of Calvino and Cortazar, these stories are parables on the art of fiction and aim to engage the head as well as the heart.Tags
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There are tempting fruits in these latitudes Many are within reach of her hand. There are men who are like fruit: they are sweet, tasty, juicy, irritating.
It's a question of tasting them one by one.
How many frogs does one have to kiss before finding the prince?
How many wolves, I ask, will we meet in a lifetime?
There's only one wolf. The other wolves we meet are merely its shadow.
This is a book of short stories by an Argentine author I haven’t heard of before. Some of the stories were more magical realist than others, and the book included some rewritten fairy tales, and a few stories with political themes which were possibly the best of all. Although I quite liked the first few stories, they seemed to get better and better as the book show more progressed. My favourites were "Journeys", "The Charm Against Storms", "If This is Life, I'm Red Riding Hood", and especially "The Key", because of the entirely unexpected slant to the ending.
Another 30p book from the library sale, which I initially picked up because I liked the cover, but took home because I like both short stories and South American authors. I'll definitely be adding her other books to my wish list. show less
It's a question of tasting them one by one.
How many frogs does one have to kiss before finding the prince?
How many wolves, I ask, will we meet in a lifetime?
There's only one wolf. The other wolves we meet are merely its shadow.
This is a book of short stories by an Argentine author I haven’t heard of before. Some of the stories were more magical realist than others, and the book included some rewritten fairy tales, and a few stories with political themes which were possibly the best of all. Although I quite liked the first few stories, they seemed to get better and better as the book show more progressed. My favourites were "Journeys", "The Charm Against Storms", "If This is Life, I'm Red Riding Hood", and especially "The Key", because of the entirely unexpected slant to the ending.
Another 30p book from the library sale, which I initially picked up because I liked the cover, but took home because I like both short stories and South American authors. I'll definitely be adding her other books to my wish list. show less
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Author Information
38+ Works 667 Members
Luisa Valenzuela is one of the many women who have emerged as major voices in Latin American fiction. Her elliptic metaphoric pieces broaden the definitions of short story and novel. Strange Things Happen Here (1977) is close to an allegory of the Argentine political situation, but it shuns conventional realism to blur reality in a hallucinatory show more style. Julio Cortazar said of Valenzuela that she lucidly charts "the seldom-chosen course of a woman deeply anchored in her condition, conscious of discriminations that are still horrible all over our continent, but, at the same time, filled with joy in life that permits her to surmount both the elementary stages of protest and an overestimation of women in order to put herself on a perfectly equal footing with any literature---masculine or not." (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Symmetries
- Original title
- Simetrias
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 44
- Popularity
- 672,449
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (4.13)
- Languages
- English, Spanish
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 3
