Hat Rabbits and Other Sleight of Hand by Pol Estrada

The author of this collection of short stories, Pol Estrada (Castellcir, 1998), has perfectly assimilated and digested the legacy of several Catalan short story writers: from the light, domestic delirium of Francesc Trabal—from whom he takes the quote that opens the book—to the irony of Calders, the darkness of Monzó, all while elegantly avoiding the burden that vulgar imitation could impose. He writes fluently and with a refined language, crafting stories with a tone somewhere between melancholic and angry, forcing the reader to decide whether it's better to laugh wholeheartedly or worry about the direction the world is taking.

There are eighteen stories, of different natures and lengths, but all permeated by a single wavelength and the same desire to play and have fun with words and things: the author is just as likely to play with form and experiment with new ways of saying the same old things as he is to display a keen eye for contemporary observation. The dialogues are also believable and vibrant, as are the characters who, though nameless, leap off the page and engage the reader, who, as one story where the narrator's notes advise, "is not stupid." Sometimes the stories lean towards dark humor, like the one where a university professor chats to a row of dead students, or towards the dark irony that portrays friendship pacts as agreements of submission and domination. Others feature notable formal shifts, such as the story in which a president of the Generalitat resolves a series of protocol issues. Any theme is valid if the approach is original and the author has a unique perspective, as is the case here.

Furthermore, all the stories are well-conceived and executed, and they know how to end, which is fundamental in this genre, as Ricardo Piglia explained: a short story is a narrative that conceals a secret narrative, and it is this secret story that shapes its form. My version of the dwarf case and the controversy it has generatedThe story, which beautifully captures the drawn-out atmosphere typical of an afternoon spent with friends by the Onyar riverbed, ends abruptly when it's revealed that, under the influence of drugs, the boys have confused reality with delusion, leading them to commit a less-than-legal act. This revelation of the story's key interpretation at the end is what gives it its purpose. The trees don't deserve it It is a brilliant and promising debut, daring and skillful, and it is not easy to use these adjectives with conviction: it seems that Pol Estrada deserves it.