Mexican writer Guadalupe Nettel's The Accidentals contains eight poignant first-person stories of people seeking to make connections and right the wrongs of the past.
In "Imprinting," a woman stumbles on her estranged uncle while visiting another patient at the hospital. Will the bond they form be enough to heal a long-running family feud? Several stories have a similar focus on dysfunctional families. The narrator of "The Fellowship of Orphans" recognizes a man from a missing person poster and calls the man's mother, but the would-be good deed has a sinister result. In "A Forest Under Earth," a backyard tree symbolizes its owners; when it starts dying, one confesses, "I'm scared about what's going to happen with us."
The title story, too, pivots on a powerful nature metaphor. Camilo is obsessed with returning to Uruguay, from which he was exiled--just as albatrosses return to within "a few feet from where they were born." Excellent fable-like narratives incorporate gentle magic to explore characters' regret and longing. In "The Pink Door," a 60-something man discovers a shop with candy that makes him younger but alters his family in unexpected ways. "Life Elsewhere" is a cautionary tale about a failed actor who insinuates himself into the lives of the tenants whose apartment he'd coveted. "The Torpor" takes the Covid-19 lockdowns to an extreme, imagining repression--and depression--15 years on.
Nettel, whose 2023 novel, Still Born, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, ponders family ties and the sense of home in these varied and incisive stories. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck