| The merciful women blurbs
The merciful women has a strong gothic tone that can be comparable to a sort of Phantasmagoria with some erotic hints. A deliberated turn to vampire novels… gives the novel a background to another ironic and literary work about the greatest subjects, sex and literature.
Verdict: Captivating!
The New Writer (Inglaterra)
In honor of Frankenstein, the bright novel of the Argentinean Andahazi is the perfect excuse to think about the sense of literary creation.
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Federico Andahazi, the young Argentinean writer gifted with at least a plentiful imagination, has found his writing source in a fascinating fiction plot, that in other times has inspired Emmanuel Carrere in Bravoure and Paul West in “The doctor” by Lord Byron.
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The novel is an excuse to make a pleasant reflection about the sense and the father ship of literary creation, but it is also a reflection that Andahazi thinks up with in a sensual and original way, by means of a captivating fiction.
Emmanuelle Deschamps, Les inrockuptibles (Francia)
Mixing up classic gothic literature with some aspects from other different origins (epistolary novel, police short stories, and scientific fiction), Andahazi builds - based on an interesting historical and fictional plot – a sort of freak circus whose best attraction is literature itself.
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This is a fluent book, an unpretentious one – despite its frequent literary references -, that mixes up with real skill the ingredients for fun and reflection.
Folha de S. Paulo
Is it or not a beginning that can awake curiosity? Without a doubt yes, and it doesn’t surprise regarding Andahazi´s skill to built narrative mechanism and his talent to keep the readers attention till the end of the novel, something he has just proved with his first work, The anatomist.
La Nación
I eat up Federico Andahazi´s second novel, The merciful women, at one bite and in a short while.
Guadalupe Loaeza, Reforma (México)
In this short novel (Andahazi) introduces us in a twisted and repulsive world, related with the darkest H.P. Lovecraft´s short stories. We must say that Andahazi uses his readers’ morbidity and it is almost impossible to avoid reading the novel completely once you have read the first few pages.
El Mercurio (Chile)
Clever master of story revolt, Andahazi has come back with something new, fresh and recommended to those readers tired of poet ´s light stories.
Richard Pedley, Jersey Evening Post (Inglaterra)
A real deep novel about greed, licentiousness, ugliness and revenge.
Revista Manchete (Río de Janeiro)
Andahazi built with real skill a gothic awful novel, sensual and some times eschatological. A real and fascinating mixing up that hides in the inside a lot of metaphors about the father ship of literature.
Jornal do Brasil (Río de Janeiro)
The novel becomes an homage to literature, where fiction is built from mysterious scraps, from somebody else memories and almost always unknown. A masterful narrative exercise: the author is able to make the reader cross to that other side of things, where reality is as blurred as any city character, above all, when it’s about an invisible reality, fugitive, unknown, chaotic, and most of the time intolerable, deceptive and also a disloyal one.
The merciful women is a good example about the liveliness of contemporary Argentine Literature: “he says what is not supposed to be said”. Andahazi has done a seduction work and a competition with the reader. The key of his success is his skill to mix up the fantastic elements with the possible ones.
Milton Aguilar, Las últimas noticias. (Chile)
With a good control of language as support of a dynamic prose, Andahazi weaves a story that is at first, an interesting supernatural terror tale, but that soon becomes an erotic thriller with a caricature tone.
Andrés Aguirre, Leer. (Chile)
The Merciful women is a work of forceful narrative quality and it is full of historical information. This novel puts Andahazi at the front of the leaders of the Latin-American literature.
El Centro (Chile)
The Merciful Women is an original and clever book. Andahazi moves with real skill the mythological signs of the deepest feelings.
Gazeta Mercantil (S. Pablo)
An original and wicked drama about the monster birth narrated in a gothic tone. The Merciful women is read with the same rhythm you face to an alpine avalanche, and its twisted end is a clever and mysterious ejaculation.
Rachel Holmes, Amazon.com
This is a novel that from its first words catches the reader attention and drawn him in a dark world that is a source of stories of monsters that fright the quiet life of common and normal people.
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And as every good mystery novel, it is possible to say only one thing about this one: read it.
El economista (México)
Romantic luxury: Andahazi knows how to lead his characters towards limit situations.
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The rhythm is vertiginous. The story is narrated with light speed and Andahazi makes his tale a real enjoyable one from its beginning to its end.
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Andahazi has written a book whose main values are amenity and irony.
Andrés de Luna, Hoja por hoja (México)
The author - who investigates historical characters and facts – think up a novel that catches the reader attention by means of its refined prose and the richness of vocabulary.
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Passing by in detail through every human emotion even though those we could define as extreme ones, Federico Andahazi gives to his tale a lot of humor, which turns the reading in a real enjoyable experience.
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As The anatomist, this work is also contraindicated for very prejudiced readers. The merciful women is, however, a possible reading for those who want to know more about a story teller with an iconoclast, controversial and revolutionary style.
Hugo Acevedo, La República (Uruguay)
Few books lead us to the certain that we are in front of a great author best work. Also, few, very few books allow us to read them with the anxiety of pleasure, and the excitement for the story. The merciful women, by the Argentinean author Federico Andahazi, is one of those few books.
Periódico de Puebla (México)
We can perceive Andahazi is an author full of ideas, conscious to rescue, at the end of XX century, the tension of terror and mystery tales for literature, and to value– in this time in which the main criteria is “language autonomy” – the marvelous resources of contents. Subjects, signs, plots, stories, inspiration, muses: those that has been rejected by some contemporary variants of Literature, are rise to light by Andahazi, a real admirer of the old cultural and literary habits.
Andrea Blanqué, El país cultural (Uruguay) |
