Innocent Erendira and Other Stories - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Other than The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother, which runs 60 pages, this is another collection of shorter works of Marquez', written anywhere from the late 1940s to the early 1970s.

Most of Marquez' stories I've read revolve around characters talking while doing otherwise mundane things. Conversations over dinner, or while working, with the art coming in how he approaches them. Usually it seems as though the characters are on entirely different wavelengths. One of them may be speaking obliquely, unwilling to say openly what they mean. Or one of them may be disconnected from reality, not even noticing what the other is saying.

There are a few stories like that here - The Woman Who Came at Six O'Clock most notably - but more of the works are internal. Entire stories that are just monologues of someone's thoughts. At least three of them are involve someone in bed having an existential crisis. Having those three appear consecutively in the book was a mistake, because it gets old by the third one. What, another character just lying in bed freaking out about stuff?

There's also a bit more magic, or blurring the lines of reality, in these stories than I've seen in most of his works. Innocent Erendira involves a young man whose father somehow grows oranges with diamonds inside. Eva is Inside Her Cat involves a woman either disassociating herself from her body entirely, or it collapses under the weight of her troubles until it vanishes beyond a singularity. Another has a man who died as a child but still lives, waiting for his next death. A crappy town on the edge of a lousy sea, where rabbits and entire civilizations exist beneath the waves, somehow.

These characters, in a state of half-sleep in the middle of the night, or only half-awake in the morning, full of worries and doubts. In that state, the troubles become more solid, something they can see or hear or smell (several of the stories describe characters smelling something while in bed as well). A man contemplates his stressful schedule as he shaves and notices his reflection doesn't quite seem to match. That it eventually has a cut he doesn't. Dreamlike, is the best descriptor.

'"Last night I dreamt I was expecting a letter," the grandmother said.

Erendira, who never spoke except when it was unavoidable, asked:

"What day was it in the dream?"

"Thursday."

"Then it was a letter with bad news," Erendira said, "but it will never arrive."'