Recommended
The Seamstress and the Wind by César Aira (1994)
translated from the Spanish by Rosalie Knecht
New Directions (2011)Saw this book in the store and couldn’t resist buying it. Slim, pretty, and the name sounded familiar. Very glad I took a chance on it. This book, which is only 132 pages long, is beyond weird, though extremely funny too, and it reminded me of Thomas Bernhard’s work, but more like the silly, goofy, amiable analogue to Bernhard’s bitter/demented characters, morbidly humorous situations, and bleak/annihilating landscapes. Veers close to magical realism, but not quite, it felt more like the inventive and fantastic stuff that pops up in Oulipo works sometimes, or maybe like Flann O’Brien’s novels in his more out-there moments. I read this in my office at work, when I was supposed to be doing something else, and I think that only added to my enjoyment of it. This is a small book for a small space and for a small amount of time. Wonderful. Aira’s “An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter” is next on the list.
Kevin Hyde
Kevin Hyde’s fiction has appeared in Big Fiction, Burnt Bridge, The Drama, and online at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Eyeshot, and Pindeldyboz. He blogs about music at Molars. He received his MFA from the University of Florida. He lives in Pennsylvania, where he is working on a novel about soccer and translation.
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