Beautiful and creepy--my favorite kind of book. Simultaneously incomplete and overwhelming, yet essential. Thus Were Their Faces is a collection of Ocampo’s short stories drawn from the seven volumes she wrote in her lifetime. I can't say that I enjoyed this book. Here you will find an abundance of tales of murder and death in many different, bizarre forms; long-term resentments that turn into breaking points which materialize in different guises, and there are also stories. And I can tell you the book lived up to the description. Here are tales of doubles and impostors, angels and demons, a marble statue of a winged horse that speaks, a beautiful seer who writes the autobiography of her own death, … —Scott Esposito, Music and Literature "Part of the pleasure of reading Ocampo – or rather the thrill, as some of her work is far from pleasurable – is never knowing what the next sentence will bring… Illogic and paradox shoot from the strange soil of her fiction, where dark, perturbing situations thrive… The range of Ocampo’s invention is impressive… Ocampo creates recognisable domestic settings that she then infects with strangeness. Ho ho, there are some that you do remember, that scar their notch against your brain, and she was one of them – sexy, funny, utterly unconcerned with genre or literary distinctions, and savagely, brilliantly, mean. Based on these short stories, the l. This one I do remember, however. I picked it up because the back cover listed Borges and Calvino as fans of Ocampo, but I didn't feel any similarities. Her stories are frequently short, but always cruel. In her world a birthday party can become a funeral, objects collected in dreams can be brought into the waking world, and lovers flirt by exchanging stories of death.” —Chris Power, The Guardian, ©1997-2021 Barnes & Noble Booksellers, Inc. 33 East 17th Street, New York, NY 10003. Stories about creepy doubles, a marble statue of a winged horse that speaks to a … Abigail, I … Mail Download for offline reading, highlight, bookmark or take notes while you read Thus Were Their Faces: Selected Stories. The punishments she cooks up for her characters are presented with unmistakable irony, and the results are frequently comedic and not infrequently touching.” —Becca Rothfeld, Bookforum "[Ocampo's] poetic sentences apply just the right pressure to turn everyday details vivid, but not lurid…it is time for Ocampo’s dark star to rise. Services . Start by marking “Thus Were Their Faces” as Want to Read: Error rating book. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of, Published Italo Calvino once said about her, “I don’t know another writer who better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don’t show us.” Thus Were Their Faces collects a wide range of Ocampo’s best short fiction and novella-length stories from her whole writing life. Nicholas Lezard's choice Fiction in translation Thus Were Their Faces by Silvina Ocampo review – dark, masterly tales Both loved and feared by Borges, these … Gina ... A New York Review Books OriginalIn 1905 the young Swiss writer Robert Walser arrived in ... A New York Review Books OriginalIn 1905 the young Swiss writer Robert Walser arrived in Welcome back. Devers, Longreads, “Magical….Ocampo’s earlier words resonate now with something of the 'clairvoyance' Borges once attributed to her….Mind-blowing hallucinogenic lines…make it important to take the stories in small, slow doses lest we zip by and miss them.” —Jill Schepmann, The Rumpus“Ocampo mixes unembellished narration and dark, fantastic elements into a heady cocktail.” —Heather Cleary, Lit Hub“Sublime poet and eminent master of the modern fantastic—her heirs include Julio Cortázar, who praised her ability to summon the strangeness in the everyday, Roberto Bolaño, who declared that he “would live very happily in Silvina Ocampo’s kitchen,” and César Aira—Ocampo deserves to be heralded alongside the greatest Latin American authors of the 20th century…. This same Bioy Casares was a frequent collaborator of Jorge Luis Borges, who in turn published many of his works in a magazine called. Photograph courtesy of narrativabreve.com “When you write, everything is possible, even the very opposite of what you are.”, “Writing is a luxury or, with luck, a rainbow of colors. This is a wonderful collection of Ocampo’s work, overall. Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date. Based on these short stories, the latter at least seems all but impossible. T his basement, which is extremely cold in winter, is an Eden in the summer. Ocampo is a marvelous writer, and each story taken by itself is a wonder. Refresh and try again. “Writing is a luxury or, with luck, a rainbow of colors. In its introduction, she likens writing to “having a sprite within reach, something we can turn into a demon or a monster, but also something that will give us unexpected happiness or the … Ocampo is a literary angler, drawing her piscine audience closer to the hook with every mysterious sentence until we bite at the bait and she reels us in….Within is a strange world all its own, with memorable characters and elegant prose. This collection of short stories is absolutely incredible. I'd actually love to read just The Guests as a since cohesive collection. Thus Were Their Faces offers a comprehensive selection of the short fiction of Silvina Ocampo, undoubtedly one of the twentieth century’s great masters of the story and the novella. January 27th 2015 Rivers and mountains present nearly insurmountable challenges to the ingenuity of ... Now in its first complete English translation, this masterpiece chronicles life in a Soviet gulag, ... Now in its first complete English translation, this masterpiece chronicles life in a Soviet gulag, For this NYRB edition, translator Daniel Balderston has added new material that make the book roughly one third longer. With the arrival this week, nearly 30 years later, of her magical collection of selected stories, Thus Were Their Faces, Ocampo’s earlier words resonate now with something of the “clairvoyance” Borges once attributed to her. I intend to real-time review this book’s fiction as, when or if I read it. Her stories have no equal in our literature.” —Jorge Luis Borges “Silvina Ocampo is, together with Borges and García Márquez, the leading writer in Spanish.” —Jorge Amado “Unsettling and off-kilter, revelatory and readable.” —A.N. of late-Meiji Tokyo. Silvina Ocampo | The House Made of Sugar: a short story from the collection Thus Were Their Faces | NYRB Classics | January 2015 | 13 minutes (3,235 words). I'm a fan of magical realism and Ocampo does it well. When you want to die you fall in love with yourself, you look for something touching that will save you.”, Struwwelpeter: Merry Stories and Funny Pictures, Thus Were Their Faces: Selected Stories, by Silvina Ocampo, Alexis Coe on Why It Matters When Women Write History. Thus Were Their Faces contains stories from each of Ocampo’s seven short story collections, from 1937’s Forgotten Journey to 1988’s Cornelia Before the Mirror. A creepy abandoned house, a knife, a gun, melancholy, madness. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for NYRB Classics Ser. Click or Press Enter to view the items in your shopping bag or Press Tab to interact with the Shopping bag tooltip. Berlin to join his older brother Karl, already an important stage-set designer, and immediately threw himself into the vibrant social and cultural life of the ... A humble clerk and his loving wife scrape out a quiet existence on the margins ... A humble clerk and his loving wife scrape out a quiet existence on the margins From the author of The Door, a beloved coming-of-age tale set in WWII-era Hungary. Historian Alexis Coe's new book, You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington, arrived in U.S. bookstores in February. Javascript is not enabled in your browser. The NYRB Classics edition of Thus Were Their Faces is itself an expansion of a 1988 translation, and a search for her work will show scatterings of out-of-print translations, individual stories and poems collected in anthologies, numerous dissections in academic papers, and miscellaneous mentions in books by the likes of Alberto Manguel, Enrique Vila-Matas, and Ilan Stavans. Her poetic voice is often tranquil…. In any event she really hit her stride, in content and style, with the collection The Guests, from which the eerie and mysterious title story was drawn. Although I appreciate the skill involved in these strange tales, they don't appeal at the moment, other books seem more tempting, and as they're library books I'll switch. Here are tales of doubles and impostors, angels and demons, a marble statue of a winged horse that speaks, a beautiful seer who writes the autobiography of her own death, a lapdog who records the dreams of an old … Those who have read "Leopoldina's Dream" should not read this new expended edition unless they a strong desire to re-read the tales found in the earlier relesed book. Ho ho, there are some that you do remember, that scar their notch against your brain, and she was one of them – sexy, funny, utterly unconcerned with genre or literary distinctions, and savagely, brilliantly, mean. Will I Keep it: Obviously. "Thus were their faces" is an expanded edition of "Leopoldina's Dream"published by Penguin in 1987. Auto Suggestions are available once you type at least 3 letters. An NYRB Classics Original Thus Were Their Faces offers a comprehensive selection of the short fiction of Silvina Ocampo, undoubtedly one of the twentieth century's great masters of the story and the novella. Thus Were Their Faces offers a comprehensive selection of the short fiction of Silvina Ocampo, undoubtedly one of the twentieth century’s great masters of the story and the novella. ISBN: 9781590177990. When you want to die you fall in love with yourself, you look for something touching that will save you.” ― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces Instead, we get part of it, with lesser examples of Ocampo's craft stretching before and after (though the stories of The Fury also seem to form a powerful and cohesive set, here incomplete) and earlier novella The Imposter is a Cortazar-prefiguring masterpiece of a certain unrelenting narrative pull of another world, until reader and subjective reality cross over into a new understanding. DC Public Library System. Stories about creepy doubles, a marble statue of a winged horse that speaks to a girl, a house of sugar … An incredible new collection of this 20th centuray master storyteller from Argentina: if you like Calvino, Borges, or Marquez's tales, READ THIS NOW! AbeBooks.com: Thus Were Their Faces: Selected Stories (NYRB Classics) (9781590177679) by Ocampo, Silvina and a great selection of similar New, Used and Collectible Books available now at great prices. However, I feel as though this is the case with most longer short story collections. In any event she really hit her stride, in content and style, with the collection The Guests, from which the eerie and mysterious title story was drawn. The stories in this book are certainly bizarre and have a way of unexpectedly creeping up on you as you are reading. I'm also a fan of what I like to call emotional darkness, and this collection certainly covers it. Ocampo’s funerals are cheerful, her fêtes funereal. by NYRB Classics. This one I do remember, however. Here are tales of doubles and impostors, angels and demons, a marble statue of a winged horse that speaks, a beautiful seer who writes the autobiography of her own death, a lapdog who records the dreams of an … The city is winched along tracks through a devastated land full of hostile tribes. Here are tales of doubles and impostors, angels and demons, a marble statue of a winged horse that speaks, a beautiful seer who writes the autobiography of her own death, a lapdog who records the dreams of an … An NYRB Classics Original Thus Were Their Faces offers a comprehensive selection of the short fiction of Silvina Ocampo, undoubtedly one of the twentieth century’s great masters of the story and the novella. By Silvina Ocampo, from Thus Were Their Faces, forthcoming in January from New York Review Classics.Ocampo (1903–93) was an Argentine poet and short-story writer. Translated from the Spanish by Daniel Balderston. I found Ocampo to be a great companion Flannery O'Connor, exchanging the southeastern U.S. grotesque for South American supernaturalism, with nearly equal overall darkness. Ocampo's friend and collaborator Jorge Luis Borges called Ocampo "one of the greatest poets in the Spanish language, whether on this side of the ocean or on the other." of the famous title story.Nikolai Leskov is the strangest of the great Russian writers of the nineteenth century. THUS WERE THEIR FACES by Silvina Ocampo. Or this may be because my copy came from the library, meaning I couldn't leave as much space to breath between stories as they may deserve. She left me guessing throughout and generally never resolved the mystery even at the end of a story. What this gains as a reference work from its scope and depth in drawing from Ocampo's many collections, it loses somewhat as a cohesive reading experience, as a single book. 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