He ate large amounts, voraciously, and without enjoyment…grotesquely.” Dávila’s animals are humanized-familiar to anyone who has lived with a cat or a dog-but their holds on the humans of her stories are tyrannical. At night he indicated, with sounds and signs of objection, when he wanted them to go to bed, and often when he wanted them to get up.

He shook the iron door of the cellar with fury, and shouted when something displeased him. In “Oscar,” a family lives to serve a dictatorial creature who controls all who enter the house from his place in the cellar: “He was the first to eat and allowed no one to taste their food before him. Similar connections to the animal world are found in other stories “The Houseguest” features a jealous wife and an unnamed visitor her husband brings home: “His nourishment was limited entirely to meat he wouldn’t touch anything else.” He hovers over the sleeping members of the house, watching them, until eventually the wife is driven mad. Moses and Gaspar become a complicated “inheritance from unforgettable brother.” Many creatures are more human than animal in Dávila’s work, and the dogs' “screams” disturb Kraus’ neighbors, while Kraus becomes increasingly animalistic. The borders between the animal, human, and spirit worlds are constantly breached in these creepy magical realist tales of grief and obsession.ĭávila’s 12 short stories begin with “Moses and Gaspar,” about Señor Kraus, who returns to his dead brother’s apartment to collect the dogs he left behind.

The houseguest by amparo davila