"The quiet assurance with which Falco addresses rural environments represents a departure recalling the perspectives of writers from the northern hemisphere such as Denis Johnson, Knut Hamsun or Tobias Wolff." —The Times Literary Supplement
"Expansive and ingeniously crafted—an unforgettable collection." —Kirkus, starred review
"Falco proves himself as a fine storyteller." —Publishers Weekly
"These rich and authentic portraits of Argentinian lives are well worth seeking out...You could imagine Alastair McLeod or John McGahern paying homage. (5 stars)" —RTÉ
"Moving, morbid, and humorous at the same time." —LA Review of Books
"Falco is a master of the short story." —Martin MacInnes, author of INFINITE GROUND and GATHERING EVIDENCE
"His stories shimmer like revelations – the clarity, mystery, beauty, depth, and sheer, thrilling peculiarity of ordinary life when the veil lifts. They’re exhilarating to read, just as exhilarating to re-read." —Deborah Eisenberg, author of YOUR DUCK IS MY DUCK
"Each powerful story captivates and I cannot recommend this collection enough." —Morning Star
"When people praise Chekhov, stories like this are what they're thinking of." —James Crossley, Madison Books
"Croft’s translations of the stories in A Perfect Cemetery are loyal to the profound beauty, rootedness, and longing they portray." —World Literature Today
"At long last, Argentine author Federico Falco finally has a full-length work in translation. A Perfect Cemetery is a 2016 collection of five stories, several of which are much longer than traditional short stories (thankfully so). With confident prose, storytelling verve, and remarkable consideration for both character and landscape, Falco writes impressively well. Though plights of fancy embroil each of Falco’s characters, they are conveyed with a compassion and authenticity that make them seem utterly lifelike." —Jeremy Garber, Powell's Bookshop
"Every word and sentence, including those of Croft’s sincere and illuminating note that concludes the volume, should be savored, consumed in a rush only during those moments when you’re flying down the summer streets with Silvi on her bicycle as she searches for the boy she believes she loves." —On the Seawall
"As so often in this compelling collection, the stories only open out once you finish them." —David's Book World
"The succinctness of the plotlines in these stories is inversely proportional to their vast narrative expanse, to everything the writing is able to carve out between the sharply curtailed dialogues and all that simmers underneath." —La Nación
"Perfectly honed... [Falco’s] skill is apparent in the originality of these plots, the economy and naturalness of the characters’ conversations, and in the meticulous observation of a gesture that may encapsulate whole central motifs" —Ñ Magazine
★ 2021-02-10
A collection of mordant and finely crafted stories in which characters lose their faith, fall headlong into romantic obsession, and challenge the strains of familial obligation.
Set in the Córdoba mountains of Argentina, the five stories comprising Falco’s English language debut are straightforward in plot and yet unfold with narrative richness and ambition, depicting a landscape that is as vivid and alive as the characters who inhabit it. The collection opens with “The Hares,” which follows a man—called only “the king of the hares”—who has abandoned the mores of civilization to live in the forest; there, he manages to barely subsist on hares and goods stolen from the townspeople until he is found by the wife he left behind. In “Silvi and Her Dark Night,” a young girl renounces Christianity to both her family and the local priest, though she quickly stumbles into a deep and impossible infatuation with a Latter-day Saint missionary who reminds her of a village boy whose slow death she had witnessed in the local hospital. The title story introduces Victor Bagiardelli, a fastidious architect who is hired to construct the ideal cemetery in a small town whose parsimonious denizens are aggressively against the idea. And in “Woodland Life,” an elderly man loses his home in the deep woods to a development company and attempts to marry off his middle-age daughter to any man who is willing to take both of them in. Sharp, natural, and often humorous dialogue is rendered expertly through translator Croft’s finely tuned ear to colloquial Argentinian Spanish, and places are described with a richness that evokes the protagonists’ psychological depths, recalling the stories of Juan Rulfo and Julio Cortázar. For instance, in the collection’s final story, “The River,” a widow contemplates her neighbor’s odd familial dynamics and memories of her late husband when she sees a woman running naked through her neighbor’s yard in the midst of a snowstorm.
Expansive and ingeniously crafted—an unforgettable collection.
