Seven Empty Houses
Ratings18
Average rating3.9
Some of the stories were creepy and remind you of the complexity of the human psyche. I loved each story from beginning to end. Wish the book was longer haha.
Wickedly smart writing
These short stories have a wonderful twist. I can see how this author was nominated for an award. Outstanding writing.
Houses are our shelter. The space where memories are created. The places where we develop our personalities, where we are raised, where we raise our families years and years later. Our houses are places of love and death. In the seven stories of the collection, the houses become caskets of isolation and despair, of emptiness and threat.
Women obsessed with ‘'fixing'' other people's houses, relatives that succumb to madness, mothers and wives unable to escape a traumatic past and a terrifying present, children who endanger themselves for a few hours of the attention that has been denied them by negligent parents. People who leave their houses wearing bath robes to lose themselves in the heart of the metropolis.
None of That: I've always loved walking in the evening streets, watching the windows being lit one by one to drive the darkness away, trying to imagine the residents' lives based on their curtains, walls, shelves, whatever little I was able to glimpse in seconds. However, the mother in this story elevates the ‘'watching houses'' habit to a stratospheric level. She doesn't limit herself to just observing. She fixes whatever strikes her as odd or improper. Yes, it is as paranoid as it sounds and she's a real piece of work...
My Parents and My Children: In a story that balances the ridiculous/grotesque and the menacing, two siblings follow the example set by their utterly problematic grandparents.
It Happens All the Time in This House: A woman tries to comfort a father who has lost his son in a story that hides so many secrets in a few pages. Who is bereaved? Who is the one suffering? What do we all hide behind our closed doors?
Breath from the Depths: The longest story in the collection is one of the most cryptic, ‘'what was THAT'' stories I've ever read, a mayhem of isolation, threatening cupboards and fridges, lists, boxes, ringing bells, death and the question of a futile existence.
Two Square Feet: A woman tries to find an open drugstore to buy aspirins for her mother-in-law whose story causes her to think of her own isolation while living in the heart of Buenos Aires.
An Unlucky Man: I cannot claim to understand what this story tried to convey but it made me feel extremely uncomfortable...
Out: A woman and a man meet in an elevator. Moments later, they find themselves wandering in the streets of Buenos Aires, both burdened by dysfunctional marriages and the need to find an exit from a stagnant present. But change is the most unattainable thing in the world...
Uncertainty, eerieness, terror. There is no light in any of these stories. The houses are empty and dark.
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