Mia Levitin 

Humiliation by Paulina Flores review – empathetic short stories

Poverty and indignity in Chile are explored with skill
  
  

Many of the stories convey a vulnerability and loss of innocence
Many of the stories convey a vulnerability and loss of innocence. Photograph: James Strachan/Getty Images

In this impressive debut, nimbly translated by Megan McDowell, Flores explores the indignities of poverty, widespread in her native Chile. In the prize-winning titular story, a father emasculated by unemployment attends a casting call, only to suffer humiliation when the shady agency expresses interest in his young daughters.

Many of the nine stories in the collection convey a loss of innocence – often tragically early. After learning that a school janitor has been molesting children, a girl “stopped believing in Santa Claus and started believing in rapists”. In an impoverished port city, a teenager plots pranks with his friends while his father sinks into depression.

The adults make attempts at surmounting their circumstances, but are often resigned to their fate. A woman with a nomadic past decorates her rented room in hopes of feeling at home, only to find “when the room was finally full…she didn’t feel anything.” Escape always comes at a cost. A woman who leaves home at 17 loses touch with her family: “Sacrifices, I told myself, and I went on with my life, a life that back then I thought belonged completely to me.”

Like Alice Munro, Flores sparks empathy with a careful attention to details. Humanity, she makes clear, is bound together by a shared vulnerability: “I bet that there has never been a person in the world who, in the middle of the night, hasn’t felt that sense of longing, and a feeling of incompleteness and shame.”

Humiliation is published by Oneworld (RRP £12.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15.

 

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