If you're a fan of complicated characters and short stories, this book is for you. These aren't feel good stories, but more like short meditations on relationships and how we often fall short. Still, the prose is beautiful and realistic. These feel like the kind of pieces you savor, a glass of whiskey to warm you on a fall day.

didn't finish the stories. not feeling it.

Review forthcoming in BOOKLIST

A Brief Plot Discussion
Lovers on All Saints' Day is a short story collection centering on the theme of romance, but these stories take place during a time when the estranged couples try to regather the remnants of a relationship that once was fulfilling and genuine. "Hiding Places" is about  a journalist who witnesses the dysfunctional relationships of some peers of his after a child is murdered. "The Lodger" is about a divorced man who goes hunting with an ex and her family members, just so a father can spontaneously commit suicide. In "At the Café de la République", a man thinks he has come down with terminal cancer and decides to visit his ex girlfriend and father to make amends for his lack of presence in their lives. "The Solitude of the Magician" is about a married women who gets seduced by an alluring, enigmatic magician. "The Return" is one of the shortest stories in the collection, centering around a women who returns to her beloved mansion after being imprisoned for murdering her husband.  Much of the stories are centered around betrayal and the failure to make amends with those you once loved.

The Feel
Lovers on All Saints' Day is beautifully written, despite this collection's lack of magical realism, the prose still contains the dreaminess and vibrancy associated with that genre. Vasquez is also compared to other Latino writers like Roberto Bolaño, a favorite writer of mine, and oh yes, he writes those magnificent run-on sentences that make you feel winded. Although, Vasquez actually does it to a point where I actually got confused a couple of times and had to re-read some sentences. Vasquez was overkill with the run-on sentences.

The stories in this collection were a mixed bag and I was kind of hoping for some lack of melodramatic realism at some point. My favorite short stories, were "Hiding Places" and "The Lodger", due to the darkness and suspense of the stories. "At the Café de la République" was sort of humorous in a dark way and stood out to me because it focused less on the brokenness and instead on reconnection. Unlike most of the stories, the couple stay as friends, rather than a more tragic result. "The Return" was quite forgettable, while "The Solitude of the Magician" and "Life on Grimsey Island" I found to be melodramatic and the way the female characters were written were almost silly and sort of.... nonsensical? Especially in "The Solitude of the Magician", there was no clear reason why the woman cheated on her husband other than the fact that the magician put a spell on her, but I think if the woman truly loved her husband, she would've fought it somewhat, but that's the point and I don't like it.

I guess my feel for that story is rather opinionated rather than critical, I just found it very meh compared to the other stories. "Life on Grimsey Island" was also in my opinion a little over dramatic and illogical, I basically have the same feeling for this story just like the prior one I just discussed. I think more than anything I was annoyed at the narrator because I felt that he was a cold, wooden board asshole. I don't have much experience in romance and relationships, but I felt that he made little effort to fix the relationship and spotting signs that the girlfriend may have been troubled? The way she talked about wanting always to flee away to some country and live freely, was a sign that she was unhappy with where she wanted to be and the relationship with this woodboard man wasn't helping much. For this story I just imagined those melodramatic 80s or 90s movies with the main character guy wearing a leather bad boy jacket and fake crying.

It also didn't help that one time I saw a meme post on Tumblr, where a blogger said that they hated literary novels written by men sometimes because it's always literally men gawking at women's tits. And a few times that has actually happened in this book which is funny as hell. But I have to admit that the way the women characters written in this book were kind of frustrating and I usually don't always make comments about books like this. But half of this collection was very obviously about the "I don't understand women" trope. The first three stories were far better in quality and had better character and plot, with the breaking point of the relationships not only focusing on the "strangeness of beautiful women."

Conclusion
I have mixed feelings about Lovers on All Saints' Day. The collection is supposed to be about the temporariness of life and love and how it's usually impossible to get them back. But I guess I'm tired of reading stuff like this? Perhaps, Roberto Bolaño did it better and short stories aren't a good medium for Vásquez. Maybe, a whole collection centered on this theme is just not my cup of tea? I'm still going to read The Sound of Things Falling because I still like his prose, I just wasn't a huge fan of the plot and themes.

Rating 3/5

Crossposted from Across From Here.

Uniquely and distinctly wrecked by every single story. This hooked me on short stories forever

Vasquez writes beautifully, however the content of the stories is a bit drab. Many of the stories incorporate hunting and large prestigious estates in Europe. All the relationships are lonely, unhappy, and often make mistakes. The stories definitely exude solitude and loneliness, I just didn't find the stories very compelling.

The Return was such a sad story....erasing and changing a place to take away someone's good memories of home as revenge. Wow.

A lot of the stories about the sadness with love.

The last story, Life on Grimsey Island, was the best and worst! Sad and poignant, and the worst for the characters, but such a good story!