Depués del derrumbe : narrativa joven de Oaxaca /

Lobo, who teaches a youth writing workshop in an Oaxaca library, here presents 11 diverse stories by authors between the ages of 17 and 25. Theirs is a generation marked, Lobo posits in his foreword, by the fall of the Berlin Wall during their infancy and the collapse of the Twin Towers while they were in grade school. The six women and five men whose work makes up this collection do tend to offer shadowy visions: an intense, antagonistic lovers' triangle; a precocious veterinarian's child fascinated with collecting ears from dogs and, perhaps, from her playmate; a transvestite imitator of pop star Paulina Rubio who is determined to replace the famous singer for real; a bar where patrons place gruesome bets that require the losers to cut off lips, ears, and tongues. The pieces are artfully sequenced, carrying us along a path of stories that with few exceptions are subtly well-crafted and pack a surprising wallop. Recommended for connoisseurs of dark and ironic short fiction in the Chuck Palahniuk mold.-Bruce Jensen, Rohrbach Lib., Univ. of Pennsylvania, Kutztown (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.