The Accidentals - by Guadalupe Nettel (Hardcover)

About the Book

From the International Booker Shortlisted author of Still Born, a powerful collection of stories about characters coping with estrangement, isolation, and the unknown.

Book Synopsis

From the International Booker Shortlisted author of Still Born, a powerful collection of stories about characters coping with estrangement, isolation, and the unknown.

Acclaimed for her piercing insights and razor-sharp prose, award winning author Guadalupe Nettel introduces us to eight characters who are each in their own way lost and wandering, struggling to connect with the people around them.

In "Imprinting," Nettel shows us a young woman finding an unexpected affinity with an estranged uncle, whose exile from the family is too deep a secret for his niece to know. She introduces us, in "Life Elsewhere," to a frustrated actor who begins, without realizing it, to take over the life and house of a more successful former colleague. And in "The Torpor," we meet a woman who lives with her children in a dying world where it is better to be asleep than awake.

With her signature bold, stark style of writing that makes her work "a revelation" (Katie Kitamura, author of INTIMACIES), this stunning collection interrogates humanity's struggle to communicate and reveals the universal longing for connection.

Review Quotes

"An unnerving collection of short stories in which the comforting conventions of family life are examined, challenged, and subverted . . . Oscillating between realism and dark fantasy, and impeccably translated by Rosalind Harvey, the stories in The Accidentals are delightful and disturbing, and confirm Nettel as one of the finest Mexican writers of her generation." --Financial Times

"Families, secrets, and hidden desires loom large in this excellent collection." --New York Journal of Books

"[A] captivating, wise, and uncanny collection . . . Nettel's magnificent stories acknowledge the frequent inability of people to understand why or why not they establish strong connections with others. This recognition underpins the collection's nuanced, insightful, and sometimes ironic approach to family, friendship, self-understanding, and the perception of how others succeed or fail in staying true to their and their acquaintances' tales and where they come from." --World Literature Today

"Electrifying . . . With laser-like precision, the eight stories probe such universal aspects of the human condition as desire, loneliness, and memory . . . In crisp and striking prose, Nettel mines the complexities of relationships, in which secrets and betrayals have the power to change everything. Readers will be wowed." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

"While probing the fringes of the human condition, Nettel's stories prove to be engrossing and relatable." --Booklist

"Seeks out the fantastic that lurks in the interstices of everyday life . . . Nettel's prose, brought to us in Rosalind Harvey's punctilious translation, is precise and formalized, with a wildness held back - like a neat picket fence confining a dangerous place . . . These stories illustrate different ways a person can become an accidental in their own world" --The Spectator World

"Guadalupe Nettel again yet again walks into uncertain terrain with these mysterious stories. There are secrets everywhere, she says, especially in life's most intimate and familiar aspects. The Accidentals never loses its sense of things being out of joint, and Nettel explores these fears with calm and with beauty." --Mariana Enríquez, author of OUR SHARE OF NIGHT and THE DANGERS OF SMOKING IN BED

"Slyly inventive and delightfully disquieting, The Accidentals is an incredible story collection filled with worlds both deceptively familiar and wondrously strange. A master of the form, Nettel draws each of her universes with great precision. Each story delivers a deliciously effective and haunting sting you'll remember long afterwards." --Gina Chung, author of SEA CHANGE and GREEN FROG

"The Accidentals is the kind of book you read in a single afternoon, curled up in its cozy dream logic . . . Each story is a candle Nettel has lit for us, so that we might find each other better in these uncertain times. I will return to the light of her words again." --Jessie Ren Marshall, author of WOMEN! IN! PERIL!

"I adored this collection, it spread its roots out within me. Nettel is an extraordinary writer." --Daisy Johnson, Man Booker Prize Shortlisted author of EVERYTHING UNDER and THE HOTEL

"A striking and compelling collection that searches for the extraordinary within the ordinary. Each narrative veers seamlessly from the mundane to the existential; the writing is deft, and unsettling prose imbues the work with a profound resonance. I loved these stories." --Elaine Feeney, author of ALL THE GOOD THINGS YOU DESERVE

"Things are never what they seem in Guadalupe Nettel's excitingly unsettling new collection. Written in spare, understated prose (Rosalind Harvey's translation is excellent), each haunting story in The Accidentals opens into something immense and Nettel's ability to convey both situational and existential dread is breathtaking. Like the colossal monkey puzzle tree that stands near its center, The Accidentals is strange, beautiful and terrifying all at once." --Laird Hunt, author of National Book Award Finalist ZORRIE

"Guadalupe Nettel is at her best in these short stories, cutting through the flesh of everyday life to uncover the uncanny bones beneath it all." --Daniel Saldaña París, author of PLANES FLYING OVER A MONSTER and AMONG STRANGE VICTIMS

About the Author

Guadalupe Nettel is the author of four international-award winning novels: El huésped, The Body Where I was Born, After the Winter, and Still Born; and three collections of short stories. Her work has been translated into more than ten languages and has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, Granta, The White Review, and many others. She currently lives in Mexico City where she's the director of the magazine Revista de la Universidad de México.