Hunt (Cacería)

María Teresa Andruetto

Short stories
Mondadori Argentina, 2012
235 pages

Published by:

Spanish Literatura Mondadori/ Portuguese Arte Letra

These short stories’ absorbing writing, which at times reaches a disturbing sensuality, plots a filigree of familiar, or even, apparently, banal objects to whose closeness one surrenders with confidence. But slyly, almost against that writing, the readers are revealed an uncomfortable reality, sometimes brutal, in which —the reader will realize with growing concern— any acceptable limit can be transposed.
I believe that it is in this uninterrupted tension between the daylight of the narration and the darkness of the narrated where the extraordinary lies —the hallmark— of this enthralling book by María Teresa Andruetto. Its characters, created from the recognizable and the mundane, move forward with no remedy towards cruelty, discouragement, failure and death.
In each of the stories of Cacería lies in wait the swipe of “what we didn’t want to see”. However, as a secret haven, on the downside of these stories, the reader can notice the mercifulness of María Teresa Andruetto, her wisdom, her conviction that the cruel laws that sometimes guide people’s behaviour could, at some crossroads, be transgressed. Liliana Heker

… The feminine universe of Cacería and Veladuras presents very different women. Andruetto doesn’t try to idealize them, nor does she try to force definitive portraits of them. Her fragmentary approximation highlights the bittersweet brightness of their psychologies, the place where fragility and fortitude coexist. The approach to the facts itself allows her to leave intact spaces to maintain the necessary dose of enigma that emphasizes the persuasion of these short stories. Felipe Fernández. ADN Cultura

The order in which Andruetto is winning the arm-wrestle to the reader is impeccable. Página 12

Awards and honours
Sent Soví Award of Literature finalist. University of Barcelona, Freixenet and Ediciones Destino. Barcelona, 2002.
Terra Ignota International Award 2001. Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, México.
Honoured by Fondo Nacional de las Artes, 2001.