I just finished the Los últimos percances (the Latest Misfortunes) by Hipólito G Navarro, which marks the last of the three books with in the short story collection by the same name. Written in 2005, it is his last collection of new work, although El pez volador, a selection of the stories from this book, came out a year or two ago. I can’t say much about the book as I am writing an article about his stories, but I can say this continues his experimental approach to short stories that I’ve been commenting on for the last few months. I think El aburrimeiento Lester (The Boredom, Lester) is my favorite volume in the collection, but this certainly has some funny and inventive stories such as 27/45 and La cabeza nevada (the snowy head). One thing I did notice is that his stories have gotten shorter and more dense. While Los tirgres albinos had a section of micro-stories (micro relatos in Spanish), in los ultimos, it was more pronounced. It has been a great pleasure to read all these stories and I’m still thinking of ways to sum them up, besides the sloppy “experimental”, which is only so useful.
