
A Dream Come True by Juan Carlos Onetti, Translated by Katherine Silver
Connection to Brooklyn: Independent Publisher Archipelago Books is located in Brooklyn.
Translated from Spanish by Katherine Silver
Onetti’s characters drift untethered, through strange places with unfamiliar people. A woman idles in a beachside hotel during a prolonged convalescence; a grandmother serves café-con-leche to schoolboys resembling her lost grandson. In these mysterious, dream-like stories, everything is gestured at, nothing plainly told. Each offers a brief glimpse into the life of one of Onetti’s vast cast of unusual characters, intimately rendering their sorrows, fears, and joys.
An intoxicating cocktail of solitude, frustrated desire, smoldering anger, defeat, and despair, invariably served with a twist. Somehow (these stories) cheer me up.