Reviews

Piano Stories by Felisberto Hernández

jola_g's review

4.0

“I love you because you’re a bit mad” - the confession of Maria, one of 'Piano Stories' characters, encapsulates what I would like to tell Felisberto Hernández after two weeks spent in a flurry of his tangled dreams, grotesque imagery, astounding associations, black humour, eerie music and unsettling atmosphere. To say nothing of a cat with green bows in its ears, a gluttonous ostrich and some bugs drunk on moonlight.

Review to come.

deborahwithanoh's review against another edition

This book was certainly interesting -- dreamlike, kind of surreal. It felt repetitive at times, with so many stories focused on a piano player invited into various mysterious settings. Nonetheless, it was rich with imagery and even laugh-out-loud funny in some moments. My favorite story was by far the one with the dolls, though it was definitely a little unsettling. 

jimmylorunning's review against another edition

4.0

Oh, Felisberto, I'm baffled! All this talk of you being a fabulist and a magician and loved by Marquez and Cortazar and Calvino. All these reviews on Goodreads, and all this talk about your "surrealism," and not one word about your greatest, least fabulist story of all... "The Stray Horse". One of the best stories I've ever read by anyone. Yes, there is less of that "fabulist" aesthetic. It's there, but it's so much more quiet and subtle, and the story ambles along without any sort of premise. The deliciousness of this story, the meditative tone, and the way you bring the characters and small minor trivial events to bigger-than-life is magical already, and I still can't figure out why your other stories never connected with me in the same way, or why nobody talks about this one. Maybe because this story doesn't involve fantastic imagery... the way I see it, the other stories had fantastic imagery as part of the content of the story, whereas this one showed you the reality of life while letting you peak (almost as if under the skirt of the furniture so to speak) into the abundant imaginary and secret life that flourished beneath it. It's still fabulist but in this way that multiplies through implication.

The story is divided into 2 sections. The first is remembrances. Nothing really happens and nothing unusual happens. But so much clarity and emotion is in each line, you can feel the significance of each nothingness. It's wonderful. And in parts funny too. The second section is a rumination on the multiplicity of the self, the idea of growing up and becoming a different person, and the impossibility of memory. This second part is great but it does get a little repetitive and even over-reaches towards the end, but I can forgive it that, since it is such a masterpiece of a story.

Since it was winter, night came early. But the windows had not seen it come in: they had gone on absently gazing at the clear sky until the last bit of light faded. The night floated up around our legs from under the furniture, where the black souls of the chairs grew and spread. Soon the white slip covers were quietly suspended in the air, like small harmless ghosts. Suddenly Celina would rise, light a small lamp on a coil and attach it to the candleholder on the piano. When my grandmother and I lit up in the light it was like being in a blaze of bright hay.

---

Celina would make me spread my hands on the keys and, with her fingers, she bent mine back, as if she were teaching a spider to move its legs. She was more closely in touch with my hands than I was myself. When she made them crawl like slow crabs over white and black pebbles, suddenly the hands came upon sounds that cast a spell on everything in the circle of lamplight, giving each object a new charm.

---

Meantime I would be watching for signs of affection and hiding in the bushes that I assumed would line the road leading to her. Besides, if she had the feelings I thought she had, she would see into my silence and guess my wish. I couldn't help trying to imagine what such a stern person would be like when she softened and yielded to someone she loved. Perhaps her gnarled hand, the one with the scar on it, would be capable of a gentle caress, in spite of the thick black sleeve stretching down to her wrist. Perhaps the whole scene would take on the beauty and charm of the objects around us when struck by the sounds rising from the piano. Perhaps caressing me she would bend forward, as she did to light the lamp, and meantime the piano, like an old man half asleep, wouldn't mind holding the lamp on its back.

---

Now Celina had torn up all the roads between us, she had torn up secrets before knowing what they contained. Of course, grownups were full of secrets: the words they spoke out loud were always surrounded by others you couldn't hear. Sometimes they pretended to agree on something even though they were saying different things, and it was as surprising as if they thought they were face to face while turning their backs on each other or in the same room while wandering far apart.

---

It was on one of those sad nights, in bed, as my thoughts edged toward sleep, that I began to feel the presences in the house around me, like furniture that kept changing position. From then on I often had that thought at night: they were furniture that could hold still or move, at will. The ones that held still were easy to love because they made no demands on you, while the ones that moved demanded not only love and kisses but harsher things, and were also likely to spring suddenly open and spill out on you. But they did not always surprise you in violent or unpleasant ways: some provided slow, silent surprises, as if they had a bottom drawer that gradually slid open to reveal unfamiliar objects. (Celina kept her drawers locked.) I even knew some persons with closed drawers who were nevertheless so pleasant that if you listened quietly you heard music in them: they were like instruments playing to themselves. Those persons had an aunt who was like a wardrobe in a corner, facing the door: there was nothing she didn't catch in her mirrors and you couldn't even dress without consulting her.

---

The painful and confusing story of my life separates the child I was in the days of Celina from "the man with his tail between his legs."

Some women have seen Celina's child in the man while talking to him. I hadn't known the child was visible in the man until the child himself noticed it and told me he was visible in me, and that the women were seeing him and not me. Moreover, he was the first to attract and seduce them. The man later seduced them by appealing to the child. The man learned deceit from the child--who had much to teach him in that area--and practiced it the way children do. But he did not take into account his remorse or the fact that, although he practiced his deceit only on a few persons, they would multiply in the events and memories that haunted him night and day: which was why, fleeing his remorse, he wanted to be let into the room that had once been his, where the inhabitants of Celina's parlor were now gathered for their ceremony. And the sadness of being rejected and even totally ignored by those inhabitants increased when he remembered some of the persons he had deceived. The man had deceived them with the wiles of the child, but had then, in turn, been seduced by the child he had just used, when he had fallen in love with some of his victims. These were late loves become mythical or perverse with age--and that wasn't the worst of it. Worse still was the fact that the child had been able to attract and seduce the man he later became because his charms were more powerful than those of the man, and because life held more charm for him.

taitmckenzie's review against another edition

5.0

Italo Calvino hailed Felisberto Hernandez as one of the two (along with Bruno Schulz) most original and strange authors from the last century. Both Marquez and Cortazar claimed that their work would not have been nearly as interesting without the Uruguayan author's unique sense of storytelling. Predating Magical Realism as an established genre, Felisberto drew on Proust and Rilke to create "gentle surrealisms," in which women become mannequins, men become horses, pianos become coffins, and a whole house becomes literally flooded with memory. What makes these strange event work is that they are set against the backdrop of, and seamlessly integrated into, everyday life. Felisberto is unconcerned with creating an entirely artificial narrative voice and instead tells these stories from his own point of view (and apparently in the same tone and cadence in which he told stories to his friends). Far from being autobiographical, this voice is both personal and authentic, serving as a familiar guide through otherwise unfamiliar circumstances. Felisberto Hernandez was a piano player for silent films and then a concert pianist during his youth, and all the tales in "Piano Stories" contain pianos, whether in the forefront of lessons and concerts, as a reason for the narrator to find himself in strange mansions, or just in passing reference or metaphor. The piano serves as a symbolic "key" and thematic thread tying all the stories together.

elpida_niki's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

I read the greek translation, thought i couldn't find it here so here i am. The describing of places, persons and objects was surprisingly detailed, to the point i could myself see them in my head. The stories feel like I'm daydreaming

kerapyon's review against another edition

5.0

Forgot to update last week. This collection was amazing and i think this is a new favorite, if you are into introspective stories about playing the piano for weirdos and also sometimes turning into an abused horse this is for you.

weirdbookbookclub's review against another edition

dark funny mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

stephend81d5's review against another edition

4.0

Interesting collection of short based in latin america mainly loosely based around a piano player. This book wont be everyones taste but loved some of the language used.