“As usual in Guadalupe Nettel’s work, the protagonists of the eight stories in this book move around the operation field of affections we call family: its chiaroscuros, folds, and projections. And far from repeating herself when it comes to a theme that we are beginning to consider universal, and that has a mere two centuries of universality when it comes to literature, Nettel demonstrates its potential for originality with every book (...) The protagonists of these eight stories represent the blind spots of each family. They occupy an eccentric or wandering space, lacking fullness or balance. And yet, these peripheral perspectives become the support points of their respective family structures.”

“La vita altrove [Los divagantes] is an incandescent book of the kind that is rarely found—incredibly honest; perfect.”

“Entering Guadalupe Nettel’s world is always risky. Risky like all experiences worth living through. You run the risk of getting lost and finding new, unsettling but fruitful directions. If writing is the place of discovery, Guadalupe Nettel’s allows us to embark on the paths that have been erased from memory and the present, into the multiverse of what is possible.”

“Nettel is free. She has fought fiercely, from her very first book, to eliminate overused dogmas and inherited truths, and her merit is notable: under the most overcast skies, she has managed to push forward a unique narrative discourse, a one-of-a-kind and audacious way of inhabiting the world.”

“Prodigious talent.”

“One of the most original voices in Latin American literature.”

“Los divagantes (Anagrama), by author Guadalupe Nettel, is a short story collection—an excellent one—in which memories, intuitions, fantasies, and the imminence of the monstrous dimension of routine all intertwine. It also includes the futuristic, spectral presence of the pandemic, and of a Barcelona framed by Carolines Street, in Gràcia, Plaza de España, and the author’s imagination. Another, more earthly presence is that of exiles, emigrants, or those addicted to transhumance as an existential option. They could be charismatic and introverted Uruguayans, or prosaic and expansive Mexicans, kicked out of their place of origin due to political tragedies or economic catastrophes.”

“These are words that arrive with the ornateness and peremptoriness of a poetic declaration: after three novels and two short story collections, Nettel shows her cards and says what she had never made explicit but had been woven into every one of her pages—childhood is the crux.”

“Magnificent stories.”

“A fire, a secret, a betrayal, a puzzle piece that defies logic and that quickly creates its own. Shock, the horizon of events, possibilities, sacrifices, attentions, the things that have been taken away. All of these things develop within Guadalupe Nettel’s stories alongside other small contraptions that deal with intuition, knowledge about human beings (and the desire to know them even better), and fantasy. And so La vita altrove [Los divagantes] is born—eight enchanting and piercing stories.”

“With these eight stories, [Nettel] reaches a high level, without any missing or superfluous elements and without needing to resort to the classic trick of strategically placing the best pieces at the beginning and the end of the volume. (...) My former teacher, Professor Baquero Goyanes, always said—citing Clarín, Chekhov, and Borges as examples of this in universal literature—that a good story, a proper one, has to “forcibly” be read in one sitting. The eight [stories] that make up this superb volume by Guadalupe Nettel have that particular quality, one that allows us readers to enter a world that, for a few minutes, makes us forget about ourselves and get lost in that labyrinth that extends beyond the mirror.”