 Hello everybody, Ian here. Welcome back to another book review. I got a new backdrop. Lookit, shells. Shells. And if I slide out of the way, Howard, the ducks behind me. We got the Lauren picture up here and then the nightmare before Christmas penny was up there. But anyways, I'd like it. I spent all day yesterday working on it with Shell and Autumn. Okay, so they worked on it and I just kind of supervised because my legs still kind of wonky and I can't really stand up and do and all that by myself. But we got it done. Today we are talking about Such Small Hands by Andres Barba as translated by Lisa Dilman. Sorry, I'm a little bit excited because I really like the way this looks. If you guys like it, let me know. If you don't like it, even let me know what you don't like about it. I don't care. I'll listen to you. It doesn't mean I'll change anything, but I'll listen to you. But anyways, So Such Small Hands by Andres Barba. I love this book. I don't really have a whole lot to say about it. I am in awe of the writing. Now, the way Lisa Dilman, the translator, describes it at the end of the book in her afterward, she discusses the notes on the translation. She discusses how it was a labor of love for her. She basically did it for free at first. She wanted to go ahead and translate it, get it done, and then she made up an excuse to go visit the author. When she got over there, they got to talking and they discussed the intricacies of things like the word choices, things that wouldn't come through in just a literal translation. So I feel like there was more attention given to this translation than say your average translation. I know Murakami works very closely with his translators, and with her having done this as a labor of love, I feel the passion in it even before I read that she did this for free. She did shop around, but she had no guarantee that she was going to get paid for this work, which I find amazing. The story itself is very simple. It's about a little girl who loses her parents who ends up going to live in an orphanage. Now when she gets there, she meets all the girls that live there, and there's another POV here other than the little girl's POV. It's not first person, it is third person, but there is a we aspect to this. And you don't find that much in especially modern fiction. You don't find a point of view that deals with the we aspect, like a group of people as one organism. I've always wanted to do it myself, I've tried it, I think I've failed at it, so I've never published it, but it works really well in contrast to the third person singular of the little girl Mariana. While the other girls in the orphanage do have their own names, of course, there's Paloma, there's Maria, there's this, there's that, you don't pay too much attention to that because it's the collective almost mob mentality of a group of girls. Now did this male author get a group of girls right? I have no idea. Lisa Dillman does say in the afterward that she felt that he nailed it. And of course she worked on the book, so of course I believe she might be a little biased, but I would love to hear from women who read this book to see how well this man got young girls right. So if you're a female who's read this book, please comment down below, I'd love to talk to you about it. Now I did not know what to expect going into this. There was a definite sense of dread, but I wouldn't call this a horror novel. It is loosely, it's loosely based on, I don't want to give too much away, but it's loosely based on true, true happenings, maybe true happenings, again in the afterward she discusses what might have actually occurred and where Andreas Barba got the idea for the story. There is some horrifying stuff in here, but a lot of the disturbing content I found disturbing because I'm terrified of dolls. Dolls and spiders can GTFO, and I can't stand either one of them, I know it's funny if any of you have read my novel Cruelty, I've never written about spiders, but I have written about a six foot, 300 pound doll, but making him that big kind of lessened my terror. But in here they talk about a doll and then it morks to something else, and I said I don't want to give too much away. But this book is beautiful, the writing in here, I have so many different highlighted areas in the book, I wanted to stop almost every other paragraph, sometimes paragraph after paragraph I wanted to stop and highlight it, but after so long the highlighting would have meant nothing and I just have to reread it again to find out what meant what in context and all that. This book is super short, I read this in a day, within 24 hours, I mean I read some the night that I finished the night parade and then I read the other part of it the next day, all before the next night, but it took me roughly about two hours to read. I will say I don't know what else to say about the book and I feel like I'm doing it an injustice, a disservice, because the writing in here is amazing, I've never read anything like it. The closest I've ever come to it is Maria Headley's, not Beowulf, the mere wife. That's the only thing that I've read that even comes close to this. It doesn't read like other Spanish fiction or Spanish translated fiction, I guess that's probably because the translator is different, but because the same translator that worked on Fever Dream worked on Things We Lost in the Fire and this is a completely different translator, but like I said you can tell that this translation was a labor of love and it really shines through to the end. As far as the content, I don't know what to tell you, I don't know, I guess I would just call it literary fiction, it's very short, very quick, very punchy language, but it sticks with you, it's beautiful, you can feel the words. Now if you're one of the dozen people who follow me, Sarah, if you don't like pretty language or you don't like beautiful prose, you're probably not going to like this because that's pretty much the only reason for this book because there is not a linear plot line. I don't think there's really a plot line at all, it's just this one character's experience at this place and the ending was fantastic for what it is. Not a big climactic ending, but for what it was it was fascinating. It reminded me a lot of the novel Perfume by Patrick Zuskin, Zuskin's a kind, whatever. Anyways, have you read Such Small Hands by Andres Barba? Let me know down there in the comments below. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U, this has been another book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye bye! Spoiler alert! Man, so of course like the guy Hollard just a second ago, spoiler alert, there's a scene in here where I think they dissect, well not dissect, they're cutting up one of the girls because she's supposed to be a doll and that just bothered me. There's another scene where they're all the wee organism, I kept on thinking of them as an organism where the wee of the group is talking about pulling Marianna's hair and you know just fucking with her and there's some scenes in here that really got to me. Also there's one line in here that made me flinch, she notices her ribs, now I have the thing about ribs also, like broken ribs, my mother fell and broke her ribs and when she did that I could hear them moving. Oddly enough, this is after I wrote The Sound of Broken Ribs, creepy, huh. I also have another book called A Crackin' Autumn that I refuse to publish or do anything with because it's about the main character Autumn dying and my daughter's name is Autumn and I just won't publish it for that reason. But this book, it's haunting me and I want to pick it up all over again and the ending it just feels, okay there's a bit in the afterward where they're talking about how it supposedly the author got the idea from a girl's home where the other girls tortured and like cut up and disfigured this other girl, I might be getting that wrong, maybe it's just tortured but in my mind it doesn't you know cut up and disfigured and all that stuff. But just thinking about that aspect, being stuck in this home and being tortured and what not. Now Marianna in this one, they like take turns being the doll so the ending was kind of, I don't know it was kind of ambiguous for me but the whole feeling of the book was really amazing. It's definitely going to go on my top 20 list, I don't know how far up it's going to go though. This might actually be a better experience, it might actually uproot it. That just blows my mind you know it's been sitting pretty at the top of my list for over a decade anyways. So that's all I have to say, if you've read this, if you're going to talk about the spoilers with me, definitely comment down below and put spoiler alert so nobody stumbles all over it. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye bye.