Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird by Agustina Bazterrica

Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird by Agustina Bazterrica is a book of short stories that might be better described as a book of premises. In a tight 154 pages, Bazterrica offers 20 horror stories, bringing the average story length to just under 8 pages, and that doesn’t count the blank pages between the end of one story and the start of another. Don’t get me wrong, short pieces can be moving and powerful, but a number of the stories read as concepts rather than fully fleshed out narratives.

Granted, short stories are not my preferred genre as a general rule, so Bazterrica is facing an uphill battle. Some of the stories have a compelling premise, but the condensed format seems to prevent the concepts from really breathing or building their emotive or thematic force. In some cases, the stories feel like they should be starting where they’ve ended. In others, the full narrative arc is there, but it’s glossed over too quickly to really hit.

One example of the issue is “No Tears,” which, despite its flaws, is one of my favourite pieces in the collection. The story follows Juan de Tartáz whose family has a long tradition of not crying. To them, tears are disgusting and vile and pathetic. His father’s dying words, even, were to never abandon the family tradition with tears. In the present, Juan goes to wakes for strangers and he tells jokes, sometimes distastefully, because he’s unaware of the circumstances of peoples’ deaths. His goal is to prevent as many tears as possible; yet, he starts noticing an eagle-faced woman at wakes for strangers whose sole goal seems to be to make them cry even more. She confesses that she is sad and refuses to be sad alone, and thus goes to funerals. Juan tries to force her to back off his territory, and there’s a scene where she bursts into tears, splashing him with the salty liquid, forcing him to flee. That moment felt so promising; in the hands of another author, I could see the story dwelling in his terror, his paranoia, his pain at feeling the tears of another. Bazterrica returns to the main narrative rather quickly and Juan notes the same woman crying at a website until her eyes have gone dry and notes: “I knew that this was her little hell, her private torment, because now she had nothing to cry about, because she was emptier than ever before, and her wings had finally dissolved into sadness. She needed me. She wanted me to stop the vultures, to wipe away the tears she no longer had” (110). The build-up to her catharsis seems unearned, and then Juan sees her smile, flies away, and sheds a single tear. This story, in my view, would have been worth fleshing out further in order to heighten the impact.

Other stories are probably the perfect length. “Unamuno’s Boxes,” for example, describes a ride in a taxi. The narrator describes all these small indications of the taxi driver’s murderous intent. She reads a bracelet on his wrist that reads AMANDA and imagines her his first victim. She describes the ritualistic practices he engages in when murdering, talks about playing his victims classical music and filing their nails, cleaning and lotioning these women in their final moments before killing them and collecting their fingernails in little boxes. What I like about the story is the twistedness of the narrator’s imagination; she pictures herself, even partially invites herself, being kidnapped, the cab taking a route not asked for. The self-destruction plot is unfortunately quotidian in reality. The cab driver charges her one eighty-four and she pays with exact change to punish him for not being a murderer. The final conceit of the story is that, as she’s paying, Unamuno places a coin in his box, which is full of nail clippers and nail polish—she leans back into the car and begs him to take her with him: “you know where” (18). It’s a twisted tale of imagining the abyss and willing your own destruction. The psychological framework of the story is enough of a justification for it, and it does not overstay its welcome.

Self-destruction emerges as a motif throughout the collection, sometimes in a frankly laughable way. “The Continuous Equality of the Circumference” is about Ada, who wants to be a circle. Not a sphere. A circle. Rooted in some kind of idea of perfection, partly as outlined by Saint Augustine, Ada wants to convert herself into a circle. She doesn’t want to be a “deformed rectangle,” so she tries to fatten herself up on spherical and later only round foods—grapes, cookies, etc. She develops a series of pulleys and creates a device to sever her own arms and legs to get closer to her ideal shape. She tries to roll towards a cookie—but her right arm blocks her. She bowls herself another way, rolling through broken glass, and is blocked again by her left arm. She dies by choking on a grape, “the mirror [too] far for her to admire the perfection she has become” (117). Honestly, the story is too outlandish for me. It’s a literalization of the harmful self-destruction of body dysmorphia and trying to meet societal expectations placed on women. There’s an essay in the literary theory world that essentially argues that neuroses in women are responses to societal expectations—women ought not to be seen, so they become anorexic to take up less space; women are not expected to be listened to, so they develop selective mutism. I’m not sure where that line of argumentation comes from, but I’d be amazed if Bazterrica had never heard of it.

There’s another story that involves gradual dismemberment (is it “Earth”? I can’t recall) and a number of the works in the collection involve body horror of some kind. “Roberto” is a more concise body horror piece with some genuine tension that gets undermined in the final lines. Narrated from a child’s perspective, the premise is that the main character has a bunny between her legs named Roberto. He’s cute and he’s hairy and he sleeps a lot. She coaxes another girl to take turns showing their vaginas to each other, but when she discovers her friend has no hair, she backs out of the big reveal. Her teacher hears the rumour and holds her back and tells her how pretty she is, and how she’s so much smarter than the other children, and how he wanted to see her bunny and teach it to be on its best behaviour. In just a page of dialogue, Bazterrica builds such a monstrous and disturbing scene. It’s a real shame that the final line of the story reveals there to be a literal bunny: “Roberto moved his ears and bared his teeth. Mr. García screamed and ran away. Roberto went back to sleep” (11). What a joke. It undermines the genuine tension with something so laughably stupid that the whole story feels like a waste. 

Contrasting that is the story “Anita and Happiness,” which also has a twist but one that lands much more effectively. The story is about a woman named Anita, whom Pablo suspects of being an alien. Everything she does feels too rehearsed. Pablo hates her, but falls in love with her, “if only to confirm whether her apparent weakness could be hiding a mastermind capable of conquering the universe, or a tireless predator harassing the human race” (33). She suggests that they should reproduce. When they have sex, it’s as if she’s studying his caresses “so that Pablo would notice she’d had an orgasm when she was supposed to have one” (36). Pablo’s anxieties provide a slightly comic tone to the piece, not only his concern that she’s an alien but also that she’ll tell all of her alien race how bad he is in bed. The twist to the story, though, is that she disappears. Pablo is proud because it confirms his suspicions that she is an alien that needed to return to her home planet. However, he sees her on the subway one afternoon and runs up to her asking how she’s doing. She tells him that she is not Anita. Pablo tells her to stop messing around and she says, “I’m not Anita, I’m Clarita” (37). Despite being identical, there’s something different about her: “She was prettier, if an alien could be described in that way” (37). The story ends with him introducing himself to “Clarita” and the thought that “The invasion has begun [...] and he felt a mix of terror and joy” (37). The story feels more satisfying as a narrative, but again, feels as if it could be developed into a more substantial and paranoiac doppelganger story.

The descriptive quality of the stories varies. Sometimes the sentences don’t really ‘pop,’ and I wonder if that’s a translation issue. That said, the story “Architecture” is rich with engaging turns of phrase. The story doesn’t really do much, but it describes dragonflies in a church: “The dragonfly of the night vibrates and engenders a violent void that settles into the walls, the architecture. It’s a great spiderweb of transparent threads that destroys the celestial breath” (132). What a wonderful cosmic image!

The closing two stories show some promise, but the endings simply don’t land. In “Mary Carminum,” we open with a compelling premise: two horrible men are competing to sleep with women during a night on the town; they rank them on numerical scales and it’s clear that they’ve drugged women before. We get these awful guys and see them getting into a situation where a woman has led them to a strange party. It’s a compelling reversal where the men can get their comeuppance. The few men at the party are essentially zombified and become the playthings of the Mother-Mary-worshipping women who also perform strange out-of-tune songs and make the men clap. It’s fine, but I think the lack of interaction and lack of self-awareness of the main character in his situation pulls away the dramatic tension. If only he started putting things together, trying to escape a little more dramatically, or resisting his capture, he might have been a more compelling character. Instead, he’s already a mindless zombie before he becomes a literal mindless zombie. The final story, “The Solitary Ones” is again a great premise but it ends when it should start. The main character is working late on New Year’s Eve and takes the subway to, hopefully, make it in time for the toasts. The power on the subway goes out and “you” find “yourself” having to walk through the unlit subway tunnels until “you” finally get to a room which, then, lacks an exit. There are mysterious white figures that turn. They have been waiting for you. The liminal space horror, vaguely intimating the afterlife, gives us something to work with, but there’s ultimately no impact. The psychological impact of the experience is cut short.

Ultimately, I think the selection is pretty forgettable. It isn’t overtly bad; it’s just flat. Bland. The style is fine. The premises are sometimes even good, but as a collection, the delivery is just lacklustre. The ideas need to be fleshed out, the suspense needs to be heightened, otherwise the payoff falls, at best, flat, and, at worst, laughable. I’m sure there’s an audience for these stories, but, sadly, it is not me.

Happy reading!

Walking in Two Worlds by Wab Kinew

  Well-known politicians often write books, usually about their career trajectories, the laws they passed, and / or shooting the beloved family dog. Two years before Wab Kinew was elected as premier of Manitoba, he published Walking in Two Worlds, a young adult fiction novel that I’m considering teaching in grade 9 English.

The big appeal of teaching Walking in Two Worlds is its relatability for a range of teenage experiences. Our main character, Bagonegiizhigok Holiday (Bugz) is an Indigenous girl who is a pro gamer and streamer for a virtual reality game called the Floraverse. I like the gaming aspect of the novel because it also provides the opportunity for some fantasy battles that I think would appeal to young people craving action scenes. Conversely, Bugz’ brother is a dancer at pow wows and impresses the folks on the reservation. With two worlds in the book, it gives a broader range of students the opportunity to connect—though the ‘real world’ sections are more prominent.

There’s another storyline, too. There’s a boy named Feng, a Uyghur sent from China to live on reserve with his aunt. He and Bugz develop a connection, despite Feng being part of an online gaming clan called Clan:LESS that targets Bugz. Indeed, the book starts with Clan:LESS teaming up against Bugz only for her to dominate them. The Clan:LESS group is essentially a group of white supremacist misogynists that want to take out the Indigenous girl and can’t stand that she’s better than them.

I like the idea of the online game being a focus, though it isn’t without some question marks. Number one: it is both a full-immersion virtual reality and a real-world crossover. The details are a little unclear on how it works. When you’re not in the game, it seems to play for you. Also, if you die in the game you have to start over again, and it takes real money to develop your player. It’s a little hazy when Bugz is streaming and hearing and seeing all kinds of comments from her fans where those actually appear if she’s experiencing the game. It’s also a little implausible when Bugz takes out groups of opponents at once and, repeatedly, “hundreds of gamer tags went floating up.” It feels implausible, but we have to just sort of accept it because Bugz has access to a magical resource, a sanctuary that exists in the real world as an Indigenous sacred site, that doubles as a special site in the game.

I think the game is the more engaging of the storylines in the text, though it gets a little less attention as the book goes on. There’s some tension with The Alpha (Clan:LESS’ leader) and Feng, a measly underling trying to earn his place among this misogynist horde. It also seems a little implausible that he’d be friends with Bugz in real life, although maybe I’m just naive to think that young men can resist the temptation of the manosphere.

The book is a little bit on the nose and spells things out for the audience, but I suppose that’s okay for a young adult novel. There’s no ambiguity that Clan:LESS is in the wrong and that Feng needs to abandon the oppressive mindsets to reconcile with his real-world friend. There are a few things that grate on me as being both on-the-nose and stereotypical, but again, maybe that’s just speaking to the adolescent experience. Bugz, for instance, has a number of concerns about her weight; in the real-world, she’s a little overweight, while she made her avatar a hot badass girl with a thin waist. There’s also a sequence in which Bugz considers suicide, indeed goes so far as hanging the noose, and I feel a little uncomfortable with how direct the planning and execution are depicted in the book. The discussion of the Uyghurs and Chinese Islamophobia is also a bit direct, but helps to build a framework for broader issues in the world. The depictions of China and its government might not be entirely “fair and balanced” but maybe it will start a conversation.

The ‘real world’ storyline is a little less gripping to me. There are some interactions with mean girls, her budding romance with Feng, her anxieties about her weight, and so on. More importantly, Bugz’ brother has some health concerns and it’s revealed that he has cancer. The prognosis is not great. The support Bugz and her brother have for one another, though, helps to drive the story forward and leads to some moments of magical realism where they save each others’ lives.

The book touches on a number of key themes I hope to emphasize in the grade 9 English course: identity, community, and voice. It’s the story of a girl who finds herself through and in relation to her community and uses her voice to make a change in online spaces. The book drags a little in places, and the ending is a bit of a flop—we never see the big battle after Bugz’ resurrection—but overall the story is reasonably engaging. I think students would probably like it, but we’ll see how they feel about reading this one soon.

Happy reading!

The Nights are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar

  Of the International Booker Prize shortlist for 2026, The Nights are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar is my penultimate read, with only the winner remaining. This year’s International Booker Prize seems to have much more of a theme than last, each book reflecting some level of arbitrary rule and tension between the individual and societal expectations. Bazyar explores these ideas through the sometimes confusing historical milieu of Iran, jumping through the narrative in decades across generations: Behzad in 1979, Nahid in 1989, Laleh in 1999, Mo in 2009, and Tara’s un-yeared epilogue.

Like other novels that have multiple narrators, I feel like each section took some acclimatizing. Every new decade was an adjustment period, and it took me probably fifteen pages or so to really get into the flow of the ‘new voice.’ By the end of each section, I felt generally invested; in particular, Behzad’s section involves a plan to transport leaflets and operate through cloak and dagger to contribute to a Marxist revolution. The plan involves a car tradeoff, secret passwords, and mysterious signals like a woman standing in a doorway. That political intrigue was one of the most compelling moments in the first half of the book for me; I also liked Behzad’s quiet, nearly invisible romance with Nahid and the way it developed through a few glances at revolutionary meetings.

Nahid’s section takes on a more domestic flavour—that is, on the surface. Below the surface, there’s a clear concern with the people who’ve been imprisoned, the people who’ve been lost, and the guilt that goes along with leaving them behind. One of my favourite scenes in Nahid’s part is when she and her husband receive a letter that offers a surface reading and a hidden one. The letter “spoke of a lightning strike, a crumbling in the backyard, and rats scuttering through the cracks and getting into her house” (82). It goes on to talk about a rat “hiding stubbornly in her kitchen” enjoying a “nice life of food and familial love” (82). The letters ends in italics: “Walls are crumbling everywhere, and they’ll never stop!” (82). I love the scene of Behzad and Nahid reading the letter together, agreeing, among other things, that the crumbling walls referenced a bomb hitting the prison where their friend was being held, implying that the rat in the house is a harboured former political prisoner. I appreciate the way The Nights are Quiet in Tehran shows how new networks of meaning form in response to censorship, to oppression.

Of all the sections, though, Laleh’s was by far my favourite. The section takes place after years in Germany and Laleh returns with her mother to Iran. Her experience as a teenage girl in Iran, alienated from her friends and relatives, is the most compelling and personal experience in the book. It gives the book a beautiful balance between the historico-political context and the more tangible everyday experiences that define us. Watching Laleh do something as simple as getting her eyebrows done or keeping a secret boyfriend is elevated to an epic status. It’s also around this time that I started reading the book aloud and really noticed the beautiful cadence of the phrases. There’s a beauty that is easy to gloss over if reading too quickly, but following the punctuation gives the sentences a warmly hypnotic quality.

For Mo’s part, the voice is very different. His priorities are very different from his sibling’s and I was pleasantly taken aback by the mention of Russian ska-punk in the opening pages. While Laleh grows into a politically engaged adult (like her parents), Mo is more concerned about his social bonds. He somewhat reluctantly gets involved with the student protests and stays up late watching Youtube videos about Iran when his friend’s girlfriend comes to sleep in his bed. Mo’s concerns are generally less political, and he distances himself from his family’s engagements—at least for the first stages of his journey.

All of the International Booker Prize short list have been good, even great, but Bazyar’s entry falls into the middle of the pack for me through no fault of her own. I think if I were more informed and educated about the history of Tehran and Iran in general, some of the more quiet resonances would land more meaningfully. Keeping track of the different allegiances and the symbolism of small actions would be a little easier.

That being said, I liked The Nights are Quiet in Tehran. While my interest in the sections fluctuates and I need to reset at each new decade, ultimately I found myself connecting with the characters and getting entranced by the pace and rhythms of the writing. There was a lot to like, and, while I have a lot of gaps in my own knowledge, it did make me feel like a more competent and worldly person. I hope that’s true, but it may be too utopian.

Oh, and one more thing: the epilogue offers a glimpse into the future (?). By virtue of the section not having a specific date listed, we might want to believe it’s 2019 to fit the pattern, but the lack of a year suggests that a resolution is both too far off and that it could happen at any moment. The epilogue is about the renewal following the death of an oppressive leader. It’s a moment of liberation, a moment of return for Behzad and Nahid. I hope I live to see that moment.

Happy reading!