Andrej Blatnik

Skinswaps was in the 'Writing from an Unbound Europe' series from Northwestern University Press, a usually excellent series. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy this one as much. My negative reaction was partly, or mostly, due to the stories having a structure that I have never got on with. Its what I think of as a 'Phillip K. Dick' style, though people like Maupassant and O.Henry were doing it long before Dick. It is basically where a narrative is turned on its head by the last couple of sentences, providing an 'astounding' or 'amazing' twist at the end. I have never really liked this style, and Blatnik is clearly heavily influenced by it. Most of his narratives have endings that attempt to force the reader to reappraise the preceding few pages. To be fair to Blatnik, he attempts to use this device to lend emotional weight to his work. Rather than titillating his readers, he tries to let us down with an unexpected feeling of disappointment where we had hope. His stories generally deal with life's disappointments, on the moments when dreams are sacrificed for mundane realities, and the exciting and weird becomes everyday and humdrum. As a literary device, his style was interesting, but it just didn't really do it for me on an emotional level, which was where his barbs were aimed.… (meer)