Mouthful of Birds: Stories

Before Schweblin's debut novel, Fever Dreams, was short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize, the Buenos Aires-born, Berlin-based author was grabbing honors like the Juan Rulfo Story Prize for her short stories. Here's a collection that reveals why. Take the first story, "Headlights," about brides abandoned on a highway by their new husbands when they get out to use the bathroom. There are hundreds of forlorn brides at this spot, including a nasty older woman impatient with their moaning; the atmosphere is nightmarish, and the ending is a slug in the gut. In other stories, a father bemoans a daughter who has taken to eating live birds, a teenager with a temper grows up to become an esteemed painter of heads being smashed into concrete, and a vacationer who's rented a remote shore house finds a man who insists he's been hired to dig a hole in the yard. Women's subjugation, our insatiable (perhaps bestial) urges, art as mediation, how little we control—Schweblin ponders weighty issues while spooking her readers.