Scan barcode
spenkevich's review against another edition
5.0
‘When a person lives through intense experiences, he has the illusion of understanding many things.’ Across a slow-burn intensity of nine stories in Paulina Flores premier story collection, Humiliation, is an examination of the way this illusion of understanding fades through time and retroactive examinations of life. Disillusionment, futility, and class oppression are central themes connecting these stories in a book that is as disquieting as it is beautiful. Marvelously translated by Megan McDowell (who has translated [a:Alejandro Zambra|1267908|Alejandro Zambra|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1467812977p2/1267908.jpg], [a:Samanta Schweblin|2898936|Samanta Schweblin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1545389695p2/2898936.jpg], and [a:Lina Meruane|1290220|Lina Meruane|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1377006956p2/1290220.jpg] among others) Flores’ prose is delivered as one of raw power and psychological probing that--despite avoidance of many frills--has a deeply emotional impact on the reader. While the themes are heavy, the book never bogs the reader down as the narratives are often delightfully sprinkled with humor and intrigue that will keep your attention even after closing the book. Flores builds tension and executes twists in stories about everyday reality that would make even seasoned high-stakes-mystery writers salivate. Often told from the perspective of children, Flores places the narrative in a place of extreme vulnerability that emphasizes the way we flounder to understand the hierarchies of societal and interpersonal relationships, particularly when those who are charged with caring for us are negligent or harmful. While slightly uneven, these stories form an extraordinarily impressive debut that examines the lasting damage done from the failures of men, the destruction of an authoritarian regime, self-defeating behavior, and the scars we carry through life.
This translation for English-speaking audiences is timely, as it was released during a period of massive protests against neoliberalism in Chile that brought up the same themes of class and poverty that permeate these stories. The socio-political backdrop of these stories are the same issues that culminated in the protests, and the violence against protesters is systemic to the same power dynamics oppressing the characters, or coaching them into a self-defeating cycle of resignation, in Humiliation. While Pinochet is rarely mentioned directly in the book, the legacy of violence and neoliberalism that plagued Chile looms like a shadow over every paragraph. ‘They killed a lot of people,’ the narrator’s cousin says in Last Vacation when he expresses his interest in joining the military, ‘Under Pinochet’s dictatorship. Do you know who Pinochet was, even?’ She tells him the depressing truth that the commercials he sees about the pride of the Chilean military and legacy of patriotism is but propagated farce to dismiss their role in the mass executions under the former dictatorship that had left the country reeling and in ruins and reminds us of what (and who) is forgotten and shouldn’t be. While Pinochet is the focus in this statement, it also reflects that thousands died under him and they must not be forgotten. Flores’ stories concern youths growing up in the aftermath of this destruction and already inheriting the scars from the former generation’s failures.
An understanding of this political landscape is not necessarily essential, but it is helpful in understanding the undercurrents of the collection as well as the logic behind the current Chilean protests. A CIA-backed junta stormed the Chilean capital to overthrow democratically-elected Socialist president Salvador Allende on September 11th, 1973 and placed Pinochet in power over a military dictatorship. Following a method political analyst and writer [a:Naomi Klein|419|Naomi Klein|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1494619590p2/419.jpg] terms the “Shock Doctrine of making sweeping economic reform in the face of major disaster or unrest, Pinochet’s implemented the largest neoliberal government experiment, privatizing every aspect of Chile such as schools and hospitals. His cabinet was staffed primarily of those educated in Milton Friedman’s Chicago School economics which pushed extreme capitalism, removed welfare spending and opened up major markets that US corporations were able to exploit. Workers rights all but disappeared and a massive class divide ensued. Anyone who spoke out was “disappeared”, any negative press was denounced as propaganda and removed, and mass executions became commonplace. While Pinochet is gone, the neoliberal legacy is still cancerous to the class divide. In 2019 studies, the top 10% in Chile make 26.5 times the average income and Chile has the largest income inequality of any OECD member countries. Roughly 50% of Chileans have a monthly income of $550 or less. These social conditions and the aftermath of authoritarian rule are foundations upon which Flores’ stories construct themselves.
‘My whole life I thought that Talcahuano was a tough place, but the truth was, it was just sad.’
There is a front of bravado and toughness to these stories that are built up if only to deconstruct and disillusion them over the course of a few pages. The settings are all barren and urban decay, towns ‘that no one liked: gloomy skies, factory soot that turned everything gray, and air that stank famously of fish.’ and the characters are all mostly resigned to fate or succumbing to the futility of fighting against it. In the opening story, winner of the Roberto Bolaño prize and from which the collection gets its name, we follow a young daughter named Sonia and her sister walk through the sweltering streets with their father on his way to hopefully find work. The father has been out of work for awhile, causing a massive rift in the family due to marital arguments and an overwhelming sense of defeat that keeps him distant from his daughters. Here, Sonia has found an agency looking for a model and convinces her dad to audition, convinced he is very handsome and it will boost his self-esteem. What results leaves him feeling humiliated and irrelevant and the story ends lingering on a precipice of total self-defeat that threatens to pull us all down into it.
‘Children don’t lie. But adults are the ones you believe.’
This uncomfortable agony of defeat lurks in every corner of the book. Flores dredges up raw feelings of powerlessness in her characters, which is doubly impactful through the eyes of the children in these stories who feel powerless to assuage the existential futility plaguing the adults in their lives. ‘Simona was sure that her father loved her,’ Flores writes in the titular story, ‘but she could also tell that something was making him feel lonely, and that all the love she could give him didn’t help.’ In stories such as Lucky Me--a 90 page novella with a wonderfully sustained tension and well executed. intricate, timeline weaving plot that hints at glorious novels this author could create in the future--Flores explores how the traumas of childhood are carried throughout all of life and the ways defeat is passed down through generations. It is incredibly tragic to see the juxtaposition of an innocent, caring and optimistic young girl with the sad, resigned adult she becomes as the narrative slowly creeps to a moment that is indicative as to how this change in her occured. In almost every story it is the failing of men that bring the family and those around them down with them. Through affairs, alcoholism, neglect, or just general inability to stand up in the onslaught of reality, Flores finds her characters reeling from the disillusionment of fathers, lovers or authority figures. Once learning that a janitor had assaulted a classmate, the narrator in Forgetting Freddy remarks how she ‘stopped believing in Santa Claus and started believing in rapists,’ which succinctly encompasses the loss of innocence and reaction to the shortcomings of men that afflict the world. And in each story Flores explores the social hierarchies and power dynamics that sow the soil for these issues.
‘Sacrifices, I told myself, and I went on with my life, a life that back then I thought belonged completely to me.’
The ways society corrals people into class standings creates a sort of Original Sin for the lower classes brought up in a system where even power over your own body and destiny is strangled by the long and numerous tentacles of capitalism. The story Last Vacation explores the hierarchy of social class and how a sense of class-saviorism from those who have financial mobility registers more like disdain for the lowest classes. The main character, Nico, is taken in for a summer from his often absentee addict mother by his middle-class aunt who believes she can save him through integration into middle-class company and mannerisms. However, a feeling of solidarity to his mother builds after an act of betrayal: embarrassed of his family, Nico claims his older cousin as his mother and instantly sinks into despair at having denied his mother. The story also looks at how resignation is socially coached into the poverty class, with Nico repeating a cycle of mediocrity and destitution he claims is due to his unwillingness to betray his mother again by trying to rise above his status but is also likely because of a learned behavior that he simply does not belong above his status. Only rarely in this collection do we see characters stand up and tear down the oppression around them, as we do in American Spirit, but even then there is a lingering sense that maybe doing so was out of line--the social structure has been so violently enforced for so long and rebelling so socially connotated with criminality and wrongdoing that people simply cannot bring themselves to do anything outside the status quo. For those oppressed in society, figures such as Aunt Nana--a woman who lives her life totally in servitude of her family--are held in highest esteem because they can get through life in a subservient role without making waves.
The theme of resignation and learned subservience is most bluntly examined in Laika. The shortest of the nine stories, it also lands the strongest punch in one quick blow to the gut. A young girl is sexually assaulted by an older boy--an authority figure at the camp she is attending. The girl is convinced this is romantic and the story plays out from her perspective as a willinging lover eager to please when in reality she is coerced in what is nothing short of sexual abuse. His status is used to overpower her and her willingness is exploited. The notion of the illusion of control and understanding is delivered on the hinge between the girl’s perspective and the discerning reader processing the information to see the vulgar truth lurking under the veil of seduction akin to the abuse and exploitation by the dominant class.
Arguably the best story in the collection, however, is the third story, Telcahuano. Titling the story after the town--theruinous place we called home--offers both a localized feel but also one of universality as we are all in this nowhere town and their fates are our fates. While Humiliation won the Bolaño Prize, it is here that the spirit of Bolaño really seems to leap with joy across the pages in this tragicomedy of adolescents grappling with the conditions around them and beleaguered by a coming dread they can’t quite yet understand. The story follows a 14 year old boy and his friends over the course of one summer. They are “tough” boys who spend their days smoking cigarette butts and listening to The Smiths. They had stolen English dictionaries from their school to translate the lyrics into Spanish, charmed by the band's working-class rebelliousness.
Most charming in this story is their dedication to their goal. They decide they must train to be ninjas because ‘the only condition for becoming a ninja was that you had nothing to lose’ whereas a samurai was something you came into through family lineage. Ninjas are like them, they decide. However, the main character’s family life is decomposing in the background like a slowly collapsing society. His father has been long laid off of work and has no desire to find more but rather lay about with drink and dream of times irrevocably lost to the past and in the wake of his disillusionment with life the mother has packed up the sisters and moved away leaving the boy on his own for the summer. Plans to rise above and succeed are often sabotaged from within and the unexpected is always crouching in the shadows around any corner waiting to strike. The story, much like one from Bolaño, playfully builds toward an incredible and disastrous climax that is more entrenched in emotion than action which leaves everything forever altered. Dreams are dashed, hopes harden and lives drift apart on the unexpected currents of the future. The story is truly devastating and rewarding in ways only the best of literature can deliver.
Paulina Flores has surely written herself into the Chilean literary canon with her debut collection and it has the power to resonate with people the whole world over. Winner of both the Circle of Art Critics Prize and the Municipal Literature Prize, this work was able to make a name for itself to inspire publishers to fund a translation that could bring it to English-speaking readers. It is a good reminder how art prizes have a responsibility in helping elevate voices that would otherwise be less likely to be heard, especially voices such as Flores that speak directly to the woes that capitalism and dictatorships can strew on a population that cause harm for generations to come. This is an important and incisive collection that sheds light on many socio-political struggles and the pains of humanity in a world where the ones we rely on are also those most likely to let us down. It is also utterly engaging and blissful to read. An incredible debut that promises a strong career to come.
4.5/5
Note: I was offered a free copy of this book for an honest review and it did not disappoint.
‘I went into debt to study, and I worked twelve hours a day and spent two more riding buses, and I did all the things that people do to achieve a certain well-being, and I got tired, I became a tired person...'
This translation for English-speaking audiences is timely, as it was released during a period of massive protests against neoliberalism in Chile that brought up the same themes of class and poverty that permeate these stories. The socio-political backdrop of these stories are the same issues that culminated in the protests, and the violence against protesters is systemic to the same power dynamics oppressing the characters, or coaching them into a self-defeating cycle of resignation, in Humiliation. While Pinochet is rarely mentioned directly in the book, the legacy of violence and neoliberalism that plagued Chile looms like a shadow over every paragraph. ‘They killed a lot of people,’ the narrator’s cousin says in Last Vacation when he expresses his interest in joining the military, ‘Under Pinochet’s dictatorship. Do you know who Pinochet was, even?’ She tells him the depressing truth that the commercials he sees about the pride of the Chilean military and legacy of patriotism is but propagated farce to dismiss their role in the mass executions under the former dictatorship that had left the country reeling and in ruins and reminds us of what (and who) is forgotten and shouldn’t be. While Pinochet is the focus in this statement, it also reflects that thousands died under him and they must not be forgotten. Flores’ stories concern youths growing up in the aftermath of this destruction and already inheriting the scars from the former generation’s failures.
An understanding of this political landscape is not necessarily essential, but it is helpful in understanding the undercurrents of the collection as well as the logic behind the current Chilean protests. A CIA-backed junta stormed the Chilean capital to overthrow democratically-elected Socialist president Salvador Allende on September 11th, 1973 and placed Pinochet in power over a military dictatorship. Following a method political analyst and writer [a:Naomi Klein|419|Naomi Klein|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1494619590p2/419.jpg] terms the “Shock Doctrine of making sweeping economic reform in the face of major disaster or unrest, Pinochet’s implemented the largest neoliberal government experiment, privatizing every aspect of Chile such as schools and hospitals. His cabinet was staffed primarily of those educated in Milton Friedman’s Chicago School economics which pushed extreme capitalism, removed welfare spending and opened up major markets that US corporations were able to exploit. Workers rights all but disappeared and a massive class divide ensued. Anyone who spoke out was “disappeared”, any negative press was denounced as propaganda and removed, and mass executions became commonplace. While Pinochet is gone, the neoliberal legacy is still cancerous to the class divide. In 2019 studies, the top 10% in Chile make 26.5 times the average income and Chile has the largest income inequality of any OECD member countries. Roughly 50% of Chileans have a monthly income of $550 or less. These social conditions and the aftermath of authoritarian rule are foundations upon which Flores’ stories construct themselves.
‘My whole life I thought that Talcahuano was a tough place, but the truth was, it was just sad.’
There is a front of bravado and toughness to these stories that are built up if only to deconstruct and disillusion them over the course of a few pages. The settings are all barren and urban decay, towns ‘that no one liked: gloomy skies, factory soot that turned everything gray, and air that stank famously of fish.’ and the characters are all mostly resigned to fate or succumbing to the futility of fighting against it. In the opening story, winner of the Roberto Bolaño prize and from which the collection gets its name, we follow a young daughter named Sonia and her sister walk through the sweltering streets with their father on his way to hopefully find work. The father has been out of work for awhile, causing a massive rift in the family due to marital arguments and an overwhelming sense of defeat that keeps him distant from his daughters. Here, Sonia has found an agency looking for a model and convinces her dad to audition, convinced he is very handsome and it will boost his self-esteem. What results leaves him feeling humiliated and irrelevant and the story ends lingering on a precipice of total self-defeat that threatens to pull us all down into it.
‘Children don’t lie. But adults are the ones you believe.’
This uncomfortable agony of defeat lurks in every corner of the book. Flores dredges up raw feelings of powerlessness in her characters, which is doubly impactful through the eyes of the children in these stories who feel powerless to assuage the existential futility plaguing the adults in their lives. ‘Simona was sure that her father loved her,’ Flores writes in the titular story, ‘but she could also tell that something was making him feel lonely, and that all the love she could give him didn’t help.’ In stories such as Lucky Me--a 90 page novella with a wonderfully sustained tension and well executed. intricate, timeline weaving plot that hints at glorious novels this author could create in the future--Flores explores how the traumas of childhood are carried throughout all of life and the ways defeat is passed down through generations. It is incredibly tragic to see the juxtaposition of an innocent, caring and optimistic young girl with the sad, resigned adult she becomes as the narrative slowly creeps to a moment that is indicative as to how this change in her occured. In almost every story it is the failing of men that bring the family and those around them down with them. Through affairs, alcoholism, neglect, or just general inability to stand up in the onslaught of reality, Flores finds her characters reeling from the disillusionment of fathers, lovers or authority figures. Once learning that a janitor had assaulted a classmate, the narrator in Forgetting Freddy remarks how she ‘stopped believing in Santa Claus and started believing in rapists,’ which succinctly encompasses the loss of innocence and reaction to the shortcomings of men that afflict the world. And in each story Flores explores the social hierarchies and power dynamics that sow the soil for these issues.
‘Sacrifices, I told myself, and I went on with my life, a life that back then I thought belonged completely to me.’
The ways society corrals people into class standings creates a sort of Original Sin for the lower classes brought up in a system where even power over your own body and destiny is strangled by the long and numerous tentacles of capitalism. The story Last Vacation explores the hierarchy of social class and how a sense of class-saviorism from those who have financial mobility registers more like disdain for the lowest classes. The main character, Nico, is taken in for a summer from his often absentee addict mother by his middle-class aunt who believes she can save him through integration into middle-class company and mannerisms. However, a feeling of solidarity to his mother builds after an act of betrayal: embarrassed of his family, Nico claims his older cousin as his mother and instantly sinks into despair at having denied his mother. The story also looks at how resignation is socially coached into the poverty class, with Nico repeating a cycle of mediocrity and destitution he claims is due to his unwillingness to betray his mother again by trying to rise above his status but is also likely because of a learned behavior that he simply does not belong above his status. Only rarely in this collection do we see characters stand up and tear down the oppression around them, as we do in American Spirit, but even then there is a lingering sense that maybe doing so was out of line--the social structure has been so violently enforced for so long and rebelling so socially connotated with criminality and wrongdoing that people simply cannot bring themselves to do anything outside the status quo. For those oppressed in society, figures such as Aunt Nana--a woman who lives her life totally in servitude of her family--are held in highest esteem because they can get through life in a subservient role without making waves.
The theme of resignation and learned subservience is most bluntly examined in Laika. The shortest of the nine stories, it also lands the strongest punch in one quick blow to the gut. A young girl is sexually assaulted by an older boy--an authority figure at the camp she is attending. The girl is convinced this is romantic and the story plays out from her perspective as a willinging lover eager to please when in reality she is coerced in what is nothing short of sexual abuse. His status is used to overpower her and her willingness is exploited. The notion of the illusion of control and understanding is delivered on the hinge between the girl’s perspective and the discerning reader processing the information to see the vulgar truth lurking under the veil of seduction akin to the abuse and exploitation by the dominant class.
Arguably the best story in the collection, however, is the third story, Telcahuano. Titling the story after the town--theruinous place we called home--offers both a localized feel but also one of universality as we are all in this nowhere town and their fates are our fates. While Humiliation won the Bolaño Prize, it is here that the spirit of Bolaño really seems to leap with joy across the pages in this tragicomedy of adolescents grappling with the conditions around them and beleaguered by a coming dread they can’t quite yet understand. The story follows a 14 year old boy and his friends over the course of one summer. They are “tough” boys who spend their days smoking cigarette butts and listening to The Smiths. They had stolen English dictionaries from their school to translate the lyrics into Spanish, charmed by the band's working-class rebelliousness.
Morrissey had named the band the Smiths because it was one of the most common and unrefined last names in England, and he thought it was time to show the vulgar side of the world. Our eyes shone when we heard stories like this. We wanted to be like Morrissey. We felt just as common and just as superior.Inspired by punk music and fueled with a need to prove themselves in a collapsing world, they decide they will start a band like Morrissey did but first they need to get instruments to learn to play them. The devise a plan: they will train all summer to steal the musical equipment from the local church.
Most charming in this story is their dedication to their goal. They decide they must train to be ninjas because ‘the only condition for becoming a ninja was that you had nothing to lose’ whereas a samurai was something you came into through family lineage. Ninjas are like them, they decide. However, the main character’s family life is decomposing in the background like a slowly collapsing society. His father has been long laid off of work and has no desire to find more but rather lay about with drink and dream of times irrevocably lost to the past and in the wake of his disillusionment with life the mother has packed up the sisters and moved away leaving the boy on his own for the summer. Plans to rise above and succeed are often sabotaged from within and the unexpected is always crouching in the shadows around any corner waiting to strike. The story, much like one from Bolaño, playfully builds toward an incredible and disastrous climax that is more entrenched in emotion than action which leaves everything forever altered. Dreams are dashed, hopes harden and lives drift apart on the unexpected currents of the future. The story is truly devastating and rewarding in ways only the best of literature can deliver.
Paulina Flores has surely written herself into the Chilean literary canon with her debut collection and it has the power to resonate with people the whole world over. Winner of both the Circle of Art Critics Prize and the Municipal Literature Prize, this work was able to make a name for itself to inspire publishers to fund a translation that could bring it to English-speaking readers. It is a good reminder how art prizes have a responsibility in helping elevate voices that would otherwise be less likely to be heard, especially voices such as Flores that speak directly to the woes that capitalism and dictatorships can strew on a population that cause harm for generations to come. This is an important and incisive collection that sheds light on many socio-political struggles and the pains of humanity in a world where the ones we rely on are also those most likely to let us down. It is also utterly engaging and blissful to read. An incredible debut that promises a strong career to come.
4.5/5
Note: I was offered a free copy of this book for an honest review and it did not disappoint.
‘I went into debt to study, and I worked twelve hours a day and spent two more riding buses, and I did all the things that people do to achieve a certain well-being, and I got tired, I became a tired person...'
jaclyncrupi's review against another edition
4.0
Incredible stories, seamless translation, terrible cover.
enue's review against another edition
2.0
Narrativa cotidiana, algunas chispas en su escritura que hacen amena la lectura. Una lectura sencilla, ligera. A veces me sentí perdida en las historias.
Me gusta cuando una mujer le da voz a una voz masculina y adolescente; lo hace parecer tan familiar, quizás es la mera ilusión que nos provocó alguien en esa época.
Me gusta cuando una mujer le da voz a una voz masculina y adolescente; lo hace parecer tan familiar, quizás es la mera ilusión que nos provocó alguien en esa época.
girlbosslindsey's review against another edition
dark
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
These were all pretty forgettable. Not bad but won't stick with me.
pluviae's review against another edition
3.0
Esto es bastante personal y creo que quizás en algún momento lo vuelva a leer. Es mi culpa porque tenía muchas ganas de leer estos cuentos, pero a medida que avanzaba me sentía incómoda, igual está bien, significa que es un libro que genera impacto, pero por ahora no creo poder con él. Aún así el que más disfruté fue el de la tía Nana, quizás eso evidencia por qué no pude con el resto.
bibliogeekgirl's review against another edition
4.0
Well written short stories full of cringe worthy moments in the lives of men, women and children.
camicarreno's review against another edition
4.0
Le daría 3.5. Son relatos entretenidos, algunos mejor logrados que otros. Tenía esta lectura pendiente hace unos cuantos años, porque siempre me da miedo que los libros rodeados de tanto hype me desilusionen. En este caso, creo que las expectativas eran demasiado altas.
minjinny_kang's review against another edition
3.0
I thought the stories were interesting and well written but did she really have to add some of those race-related details into some of her stories cus she never elaborates on any of them and they don’t serve the plot in any way
lyrasbookshelf's review against another edition
3.0
I might just be too dumb to understand short stories.
vcriveros's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75