Landscapes of a New Land: Short Fiction by Latin American Women

This variegated anthology spotlights 21 accomplished authors from 10 countries. The celebrated Clarice Lispector and Luisa Valenzuela appear alongside less familiar contributors; each voice here achieves distinction. In ``An Avid One in Extremis,'' Hilda Hilst of Brazil offers a deathbed scene couched in roily stream-of-consciousness. The archives in Uruguayan Cristina Peri Rossi's ``The Museum of Futile Endeavors'' immortalize (in alphabetical and chronological files) hopeless efforts--such as one man's 10-year attempt to teach his dog to speak. In ``Solitude of Blood,'' Marta Brunet, from Chile, describes a woman who transcends her husband's domination through the pleasure afforded by a single phonograph record. The narrator of Mexican Margo Glantz's ``Genealogies'' reconstructs her family's history from snippets of relatives' accounts and images drawn from cinema. In ``The Enchanted Raisin,'' a fairy tale by Jacqueline Balcells of Chile, three ``absolutely unbearable'' children make their mother's life so wretched that she shrivels into a raisin. Agosin is the author of Pablo Neruda. (Dec.)