Natalia García Freire’s bird-making machine

Original language: Español

Year of publication: 2024

Valuation: Highly recommended

Normally it is the other way around. The “usual” path usually goes from the story to the novel, but Natalia is a peculiar writer even for that and The bird making machine It comes after two novels and more than 3 years of silence. And it is not a question of comparing, especially because I have You brought the wind with you on the to-do pile for too long, but yes Our dead skin It already showed us a writer of great potential, The bird making machine confirms that potential and shows a mature author with an absolutely recognizable personal universe.

There are eleven short stories that make up a volume that, in addition to its internal coherence in terms of obsessions and themes, is surprising for the circularity with which it closes. The obsessions and themes follow a continuous line (at least with the aforementioned Our dead skin): the body, childhood, death or violence go through, in one way or another, the vast majority of the stories. I would especially highlight the body. In The bird making machine (another constant presence, by the way) we find bodies in transformation, bodies in transition, broken bodies, bodies that awaken desire or disgust, etc. Perhaps we could even talk about stories written with or from the body.

Another notable aspect of the volume is the atmospheres, which move between the spectral and the dreamlike, although anchored in reality. Essential to achieving these atmospheres are the images, almost close to a Maldororian poetics, that Natalia creates in her stories. Two good examples constitute Ways to fix what isn’t brokena story that could fit into the out there the Kate Folk, and I love Paquita Gallegos, strange tale of revelation/recognition with a magnificent setting.

But the curious thing is that these atmospheres are not constructed from the explicit. There is a general sleaze in The bird making machine that comes from more than what has not been told and that plays with grotesque situations that sometimes border on black humor. A clear example of the first is the circular and terrible burned heada story about deaths and rebirths outside of time and space; of the second, the best exponent is The person you fell in love with, one of my favorite texts.

The above leads me to think of a magical-grotesque realism (could it be?), an Andean Gothic passed through filters of very dark humor. Labels that serve to give an idea, yes, but they are still mere reductionisms. At the end of the day, we are talking about good literature and that is what counts.

Also from Natalia García Freire in ULAD: Our dead skin

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And here we leave you the interview that the great José de Monfort and yours truly did with Natalia García Freire: