BOOKS FROM BOLIVIAFresh Dirt from the Grave
Tags:
Set in Bolivia
Female author
Description:
Shipwrecks, dive bars, possession, and science—this is where contemporary horrors and ancient terrors meet. In Fresh Dirt from the Grave , a hillside is “an emerald saddle teeming with evil and beauty.” It is this collision of harshness and tenderness that animates Giovanna Rivero’s short stories, where no degree of darkness (buried bodies, lost children, wild paroxysms of violence) can take away from the gentleness she shows all violated creatures. A mad aunt haunts her family, two Bolivian children are left on the outskirts of a Metis reservation outside Winnipeg, a widow teaches origami in a women’s prison and murders, housefires, and poisonings abound, but so does the persistent bravery of people trying to forge ahead in the face of the world. They are offered cruelty, often, indifference at best, and yet they keep going. Rivero has reworked the boundaries of the gothic to engage with pre-Columbian ritual, folk tales, sci-fi and eroticism, and found in the wound their humanity and the possibility of hope.
Reviews:
(2 weeks ago) |
23 May, 2026
This is a no for me. It is a motley crew of short stories that dip into many cultures and ethnicities that I’m not sure the author is entirely familiar with and don’t ring authentic to me. I’m sure some will like the gothic horror presented here, but I was underwhelmed.
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(7 months ago)
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28 Oct, 2025
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24 Feb, 2026
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(6 months ago)
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18 Nov, 2025
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(3 weeks ago)
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17 May, 2026
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(2 months ago)
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20 Mar, 2026
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