Stephanie Jane reviewed Scent of Buenos Aires by Hebe Uhart
Slice of life vignettes
3 stars
Hebe Uhart's short story collection, The Scent Of Buenos Aires, wasn't really what I expected so I found it took the reading of several stories before I truly began to appreciate her style. The stories aren't 'stories' in the sense I usually encounter them in a short story collection. Instead of a sense of narrative flow and a (often dark) twist, these works I think would better be described as slice-of-life vignettes. I felt overall that I gained an understanding of Argentine daily life, particularly in smaller communities. The titular use of Buenos Aires had led me to expect mostly city environments, but actually I envisaged more of Uhart's scenes taking place in a rural Argentina.
While I loved these settings though, I'm not sure how much I actually liked the stories themselves! Few of the characters seemed to have any great depth because Uhart's fairytale storytelling style made it …
Hebe Uhart's short story collection, The Scent Of Buenos Aires, wasn't really what I expected so I found it took the reading of several stories before I truly began to appreciate her style. The stories aren't 'stories' in the sense I usually encounter them in a short story collection. Instead of a sense of narrative flow and a (often dark) twist, these works I think would better be described as slice-of-life vignettes. I felt overall that I gained an understanding of Argentine daily life, particularly in smaller communities. The titular use of Buenos Aires had led me to expect mostly city environments, but actually I envisaged more of Uhart's scenes taking place in a rural Argentina.
While I loved these settings though, I'm not sure how much I actually liked the stories themselves! Few of the characters seemed to have any great depth because Uhart's fairytale storytelling style made it difficult for me to understand their motivations. For example, in one story a woman loses her sanity and threatens her young son with a knife. Her husband rushes home - to build an oven by the side of road. Er, what?! I felt this lack of understanding also affected the stories' memorability for me. Other than a couple of the women - poor cold Botznia and inquisitive Luisa - I couldn't honestly say that I can remember much of what happened or to whom. This is strange for me. I know I liked most of these vignettes as I was reading them, and I can recall elements of them while scrolling back through the collection as I review it. However without that prompt my recollections are vague.
