Redemption of the Cannibal Woman: And Other Stories

The title novella and three shorter works translator Alberto Manguel drew from 1970s collections in Spanish of Argentine writer Alberto Denevi's fiction all deal with nearly desperate hopes-a recently orphaned adolescent gay bartender's hope for a patron (who will whisk him away from the frustrations of serving bitter queens), an aging female poet's hope to be better appreciated posthumously than she has been in her lifetime which may be over, a pair of aging spinsters' hope to meet the only other nocturnal resident of a once fashionable apartment building that is now mostly offices, and an unbelievably buxom vaudeville performer's hope to have finally found someone to love and treasure here (and get her out of the tawdry theater at which she pretends to be a Caribbean cannibal).I am puzzled by translator Manguel's assertion that Denevi's prime interest is in plot, because except in the first story, Michel, there does not seem to me to be much in the way of plot in the four fictions. They are, instead, long on character development, with lives of quiet and not-so-quiet desperation. Although the denouement is very sudden in "Michel," I most like it and "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik." I find "Letter to Gianfranco" and "The Redemption of the Cannibal Woman" overwrought-both in literary style and in their protagonists' wild fantasizing about recognition and redemption (and love). Both seem padded, though the four fictions only fill 134 smallish pages.