“Suddenly, I close the taxi door, grab his arm, move closer, and say: Let’s go, Unamuno. Take me with you, you know where.”

It takes a true, deal-with-the-devil talent to make the above, innocuous sentence so terrifying within the context. It physically reads like a lover’s murmur, but they’re holding a knife behind their back. Bazterrica creates a feeling, something tangible, here and within “Tender is the Flesh,” so uniquely selfish each time, that I can only say: you’ve gotta see it to believe it. Fever dreams, brief and silly thoughts, thick and cloying nightmares that stick in your throat. Stories and emotions that are so visceral and massive while remaining personal and intimately insidious, confined to less than short fiction is no easy feat and Bazterrica handles it perfectly. A walk in the park.

There were stories that made me put the book back in my bag, zip it up, wait ten minutes and run and grab it again. There were stories where I would nod my head and say, “Yes, yes I get it, I understand this completely,” and I didn’t, I never did. Not completely. This author is always holding something out of reach from you. We aren’t supposed to have everything.

No one is doing it like Agustina Bazterrica.

5/5 I want her to write a book that’s more than 500 pages but I know that the moment I open it I’ll spontaneously combust.