> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Nettel-Petales-et-autres-histoires-embarrassantes...

> « La plus belle chose
que nous puissions
éprouver, c'est le
mystère des choses. »
—Albert Einstein

> PÉTALES, de Guadalupe Nettel, 142 pages, 2009, Actes Sud. — Comment un homme découvre-t-il sa vraie nature de cactus ? Comment opère le chasseur d'odeurs qui traque sa « Fleur » dans les toilettes pour dames ? L'auteur, une jeune mexicaine de 37 ans, nous livre un recueil de six étranges nouvelles sur la folie ordinaire à Paris, Tokyo, Mexico, Santa Helena… Voyages aux frontières, aux minces frontières entre bien et mal, beau et laid, normal et pathologique. On lit, un doux malaise vous envahit, on savoure avec délices : sensibilité retenue, humour, fantaisie, crudité sans complaisance, délicatesse. Cet ouvrage - belle et troublante couverture de Nicoletta Ceccoli - a obtenu le prix franco-mexicain Antonin Artaud. (Jacques MARMEY)
—Carnets du Yoga, (279), Septembre 2009, (p. 19)

Thanks to Eidelweiss for my ARC.

This was my first time reading Guadalupe Nettel and really all that brought me to this collection was that it is newly translated work and it is labeled straightforward as unsettling stories. Nettel looks gazes stares unflinchingly at the perverse each of the stories gazes at something unsettling the character is fixated on. Yet through the gross-out factor of pretty much all of the stories Nettel situates prose that is both beautiful and poetic. The characters within are relatable too and say and do things that we have done or thought about before. It is this troubling familiarity that is most unsettling. These people are people that you know they are people you have met and they could even and probably are you. The obsessive reigns the ability to express mania and addiction what it is to be drawn to something so hard that you cannot let go. The hopelessness of weird entanglement with the perverse and how people contend with it are full explored. For those that hang in there the turns of phrase and insights into the inner space of strange desire are powerful. ( )