The Week of Colors

The late Mexican writer Garro, whose Recollections of Things to Come earned her a reputation as a pioneer of magical realism, dazzles in this 1963 collection of stories about hauntings, curses, and the uncanny. In “It’s the Tlaxcaltecas’ Fault,” a woman returns home after an afternoon away, only for her maid to tell her that she’s been missing for weeks. “The Tree” follows a wealthy racist woman who opens her door to an elderly Indigenous acquaintance bearing a knife and a bloody story of demonic possession. In the title entry, the mysterious Don Flor tortures women named after days of the week, in rooms specially designed for each day and the women who embody them. Garro’s expertly woven stories showcase her boundless imagination and insightful exploration of the entanglement between national and personal histories. Throughout, McDowell perfectly preserves Garro’s lyricism, as when a character recalls as a child seeing photos of dead bodies in the newspaper: “There were days like that one, when death’s skinny fingers touched the streets and the trees, to make us feel that nothing contained in this whole world was ours.” In the introduction, Álvaro Enrigue cites the influence of Garro, who died in 1998, on Gabriel García Márquez. This collection highlights what made the author such a seminal figure in Latin American literature. (Nov.)