AUTHOR: Clara Pastor
PUBLISHER: El Acantilado
GENRE: Fiction
READER’S NAME: Alejandro Varderi
DATE: May 23, 2022

In her first collections of short stories Clara Pastor reimagines the lives of characters in situations where a sneeze could be a catastrophe, that is, quiet places where not much seems to happen. The plain, descriptive language helps to palliate the blandness of the anecdotes, engaging the reader in the particulars of the petit histoire: a letter that comes too late (“El ángel necesario” “The Needed Angel”), a dog with scabies as an allegory of the lack of communication between two former lovers on vacation (“Yucatán”), a solitary girl witnessing the miseries of the adult world (“Los buenos vecinos”), a couple recalling the life of a deceased son surrounded by a landscape where nothing moves (“New Haven”.)

The book shifts from Spain to Mexico to New England, expanding the geographical scope of the content by the pen of a well-traveled new author with broad experience as translator, publisher, and educator. The female narrative voice portrays the assorted characters, acting as a spectator in life’s merry-go-round and bringing to the page what she sees without judging or enticing the reader. Such detachment works as a double-edged sword since, on the one hand, the stories let the protagonists evolve without external intrusions but, on the other, they miss their goal, that is, to hold the reader’s attention until the end.

Clara Pastor’s writing style echoes the works of authors such as Gabriela Wiener, Sonia Hernández, and Valeria Luiselli, however, it does not reach the intensity and mastery displayed by these contemporary writers. The book is a good exercise in plot and character development, being the result of a promising voice still shaping herself. A voice that needs to mature and flourish, and seems too impatient to please, preferring to stay in safe territory rather than taking risks.

The range of subjects is not large but compact and of general interest, thus, an American reader might find points of contact with her/his own experiences, provided that the writing catches the attention.

Clara Pastor was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and holds university degrees from Boston and Barcelona where she lives and runs her own publishing house specialized in criticism and art books. She has worked for other publishing house such as Quaderns Crema/ Acantilado, Planeta Internacional, Crítica and Ariel. She also teaches literature courses for law and business students at ESADE.