Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird

Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird is a stunningly diverse collection of 20 tense, shocking and brutal short stories from Agustina Bazterrica.

This was a beautifully crafted collection, it is like every single word was placed to perfection to create such a beautiful and evocative reading experience. Every one of the stories delves deeply into the human psyche, uncovers our darkest fantasies or delves deeply into our most deranged nightmares.
Within moments of starting the first of these stories, I was left in awe of Bazterrica's beautifully haunting and razor-sharp writing. I have never before read something which manages to be both incredibly macabre yet still managing to remain so humourous and relatable.

A wonderfully thrilling collection of horrifically dark and dangerous short stories. This is one not to be slept on!

A beautifully written collection of short stories from the author who brought us Tender is the Flesh. I'm a big fan of TitF and was ecstatic to receive an advanced copy of Nineteen Claws and a Blackbird.

This collection fell a little short of the bar set by Bazterrica's first full length translated novel, but was an enjoyable read nonetheless. She is quickly proving herself an absolute master of existential horror, with haunting, free flowing prose and poetic depictions of perception and the horror we can hold within it. The perfect collection for fans of Eric LaRocca. Thanks to Netgalley for my copy.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

As soon as I read the first story in this collection of nineteen short stories, I knew that I was going to absolutely love this. I quickly fell in love with Agustina's writing, I love how she describes things in such a horrific way that it makes it easy to picture the story unfolding in your head. I love how within these short stories, she explores so many different topics and each story is wrapped up beautifully - they are so unhinged and horrifying but I could not stop reading, I devoured this book because I was so intrigued where each story was going to go.

I definitely had a few favourites in this collection, for example 'A Light, Swift and Monstrous Sound', 'Candy Pink', 'Unamuno's Boxes', 'No Tears', 'The Continuous Equality of the Circumference' and 'The Solitary Ones'.

⚠️ TWs: mentions blood, death (human and animal), suicide, alcohol use, paedophilia, murder, grief, profanity, vomitting, poisoning, overdose, gun use, sexual situations, dismemberment, child abuse, assassination, zoophilic and necrophiliac incest, physical assault, colonisation, dieting, choking, prostitution, abortion, whipping, rape and burns ⚠️

I don’t even have any words. This collection was modern art. I’m not even joking it was incredible. The first story she really didn’t need to go that hard but she did, beginning with an image of a dentist picking up her neighbours dentures and the neighbour throwing themselves out of a window and landing dead in front of her. I loved ‘Unamuno’s Boxes’ about the taxi driver, ‘Roberto’, ‘Dishwasher’, ‘Tiecher vs Nietzsche’, and ‘Elena-Marie Sandoz’.

The two I cannot stop thinking about are ‘Candy Pink’ which might be my favourite of the selection. It was absolutely unhinged. It played with form and narrative in such an engrossing and horrific way and I have never read a story about heartbreak written so violently and candidly before. ‘The Solitary Ones’ which is the final story in the collection is an absolutely masterpiece. The final image of it is going to haunt me forever. What a way to end a short story collection.

Nineteen Claws is everything I wanted. It encapsulates the crux of what is so special and horrifying about Argentine women’s fiction. Her prose is even wittier and visceral than in Tender is the Flesh and she really uses the short story medium to explore a vast scope of horror and horror-adjacent ideas.

Honestly put it in an art gallery. I loved it.

This is probably the first time I've been completely lost for words when trying to write a review. That should give you an idea of how shocking this collection of short stories really is! I have read a lot of horror and gruesome crime fiction but it was the way that each story made me feel so uncomfortable that made them stand out against other stories in this genre. As I was reading, everything in my body was telling me to stop - that I shouldn't read on, but at the same time it was impossible to not carry on. I give full marks to the author and translator for taking topics that most people don't like to talk about or think about and just going for it! Before I put anyone off reading it, the great thing about this was that just when I thought I would have to stop reading - that I didn't want the story to go where I thought it was heading - there was sudden relief with a burst of humour or the story would completely switch on you and the meaning or moral would change which really kept the tension rising up and down throughout.

As these are short stories, I won't go into detail about each one as all it will do is give too many spoilers. However, my favourite story from the book has to be Roberto - definitely one which will grab your attention and prompt a lot of debate. I almost feel weird telling everyone that I enjoyed it - you'll just have to read it to find out why!

I really feel like this collection of stories was one big and complex therapy session. All designed as a way to work through different challenges people may have to face in life; break-ups, death, assault, depression, murder. This led to some very uncomfortable explorations which you have to break through for them to all start making sense. It was almost a message that you have to push through the difficult, embarrassing or impossible to come out the other side.

First published in 2020, Argentine writer Agustina Bazterrica’s collection echoes concerns that surface elsewhere in her work from the damage wrought by capitalism to the threat of patriarchy, to the myriad forms of violence and disorientation that might lurk beneath the surface of the seemingly mundane and too often aimed at women or children by predatory men. Bazterrica seems fascinated by themes of alienation and the possible disconnect between surface perceptions and underlying realities, and she’s often fiercely invested in the kind of atmospheric but gruesome, feminist body horror I associate with writers like Mónica Ojeda and Sayata Muraka. Unsettling accounts of murder and abuse resurface across Bazterrica’s narratives, in “Unamuno’s Boxes” a taxi driver who shares the famous author’s name may or may not be a serial killer; in the striking “Earth” a child kills her abusive father; while “A Hole Hides a House” comments on poverty and the trafficking of young girls. Sometimes Bazterrica’s writing takes on aspects of the surreal as in her twisted fairy tale “Mary Carminum” or delves into the realms of the bleakly absurdist – on prominent display in entries like “Dishwasher” which reads like a parody of a fifties romance starring actors like Doris Day. Standouts like “Candy Pink” present an ironic view of the aftermath of a breakup in a style that reminded me at times of Dorothy Parker; and I was unexpectedly drawn in by the darkly comical tones of “Teicher vs. Nietzche” an unlikely convergence of cat, jilted football fan and elements of Nietzche’s philosophy. Bazterrica’s worlds are riddled with cruelty and exploitation, sometimes fantastical but grounded in her awareness of the rampant inequalities and fault lines of contemporary Argentine society. It’s a place in which children and animals are particularly vulnerable and, here, a place peopled by characters too often caught up in obsession – unable to deal with their bodily existence as in “The Continuous Equality of the Circumference” in which a woman has an unusual response to the pressure of conforming to impossible beauty ideals. But like so many collections this can be quite uneven, some pieces like “The Wolf’s Breath” are more gesture than finished story, while others feel strangely slight despite the seriousness of their subject matter. Translated by Sarah Moses.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Pushkin Press for an ARC
Rating: 3 to 3.5

“You wouldn’t understand, Carrie, it’s just a feeling.The feeling that there are these things that break apart into big pieces that choke me.”

Augustina Bazterrica once again thrills the reader with this collection of dark fiction that delves deep into the recesses of human nature. Contained in these disturbing stories are a variety of hells where fear and desperation for human desire bring out an unsettling reality that is difficult to swallow.

The moment I realised we had another book by this author I knew I had to pick it up straight away. “Tender Is The Flesh” is one novel that strikes an unsettling chord with me. Going into this new collection I was excited to experience something equally messed up again.

I was not disappointed. Laced with brutality and dark humour, some of these stories will make you feel uncomfortable and make you put the book down for a second to process what you have read. I found myself doing this often with this collection. As shocking as some of these were I found I enjoyed being surprised at every turn with this book.

What the author has created here are unforgettable stories that will have you reaching for them time and time again. A uniquely disturbing set of dark fiction I would definitely recommend to those who have yet to try this author.

Hight quality weird fiction or literary horror? It's not easy to put these stories in a box. They are all portraits of unusual situations in prose, beautifully translated and superbly edited. Neither is it easy to see the author of 'Tender is the Flesh' in these tales: they are more haunting and poetic than shocking and grotesque, far more personal and empathetic than nauseating and macabre. The subtle humor, the depressed voices of urbanites, the cries of abused women, the existential ambiguity of cats named after famous personages; the claustrophobia of this kind of narration (usually given directly in second or first person) is outweighed by the freedom of Bazterrica's prose, the utterly unrestrained flow of words - reminiscent of the power of incantantions. Most of the stories are very short, but they are not exactly flash fiction: the writing reveals them as self-contained worlds, be it a story about grief ('The Dead'), revenge ('Earth' - my favorite, incidentally) or a dream ('the Wolf's Breath'.) The book is like a hole filled with darkness and memory: don't expect twists or intrigues, expect echoes; don't ask for explanations - you'll get mysteries. Many thanks to Pushkin Press for an ARC via NetGalley.