Diving Board

Praise for Diving Board and Tomás Downey:

“Opening Diving Board is like waking in a white room with no doors or windows. A question resonates as one reads these stories: How did Tomás Downey place me here so perfectly, and why is it that I don't want to leave?”—Agustina Bazterrica, author of Tender is the Flesh, Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird, and The Unworthy

“Downey’s haunting, weird tales tend to linger, leaving a discomposing sensation in their wake. But they leave one wanting to move on and find out where his imagination will wander next. His stories have appeared in a number of English language publications, but now with this collection, translated in clear, clean prose by Sarah Moses, a broader introduction to the eerie landscape his characters inhabit is available in one volume.”—Joseph Schreiber, Rough Ghosts

“Some of the afflictions Downey’s characters face in these stories are emotional, while others are uncanny in their origins. That juxtaposition makes for an even more powerful sense of alienation; in other words, what happens when the source of your existential dread turns out to be as familiar as the back of your hand? These stories turn on recognizable bonds shifting gears into something else—and pushing these characters towards unwanted epiphanies.”—Tobias Carroll, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

“Nineteen stories, one-hundred seventy-four pages: there is no settling in Tomás Downey’s book of short stories. […] Five pages are allotted for a character to grow a live horse from a seed and then watch it crumble; eight pages for the story of a father who takes his daughter to the pool where she climbs onto the diving board, gets a running start, jumps, and then seemingly vanishes from existence; fifteen pages contain a haunting so pervasive that the woman this ghost left behind falls ill and is unable to conceive a child with her new partner. There is no time or space to get comfortable before tipping over into the next uneasy scenario with a force that takes hold of the reader and compels them onward so that all the stories can be devoured in the course of a single night. […] Truthfully, I am not sure what you’re supposed to come away with after reading these stories. What I do know is that they’ll stick. You’ll turn them over in your head, you’ll try to puzzle out what resists solving. Perhaps it’s all about the why. […] Why resist these strange, unstable stories? Why reject them as reality? Let their inertia pull you in, warp your sight, introduce the world anew on a slant. The world of Downey and Moses’s Diving Board is controlled, bizarre, maddening. Words that I think would not be very out of place to describe the world we live in today.”—Antoinette Goodrich, Exchanges

“Tomás Downey has mastered the chill in the air, the prickling at the back of your neck; in Moses’s translation, colloquial and keen, these stories could be told by your neighbor or cousin. Recurring instances of the surreal—disappearances, repetitions, the supernatural and unexplained—heighten the characters’ more routine circumstances and recalibrate the way they see the world. Here, the gore, rot, and dread are tools for examining how we deal with the real horrors in our lives. As the narrator of “The Men Go to War” offers in the stead of seeking relief in tragedy’s wake: ‘Better to hold on to the raw pain that’s perpetual but bearable, like a child who’s sick and in need of constant care.’”—Regan Mies, Asymptote Journal

“Translated beautifully by Sarah Moses, Downey’s snapshots are like brief glimpses into a deeply uncertain world. […] In story after story, Downey’s characters seem numb, beaten-down, dispirited, or depressed. In this state, they seem unsurprised at even the strangest things, keeping their heads down and trying to ignore that which doesn’t fit into what has become their narrow lives. Only a few characters, like the older lady who’s worked up over a soap opera episode, show any sign of animation. Downey’s ability to tightly control his focus on specific characters and what the reader can see or learn reveals the author’s highly-developed storytelling skills.”—Rachel Cordasco, Speculative Fiction in Translation

“Bizarro fiction is not a genre: it’s a disturbing variant that hides a vague threat, that leaves the reader feeling something between awe and unease. In his first book, Tomás Downey is an expert in this type of story: cursed childhoods, fantastical plants, sudden deaths, cruel plagues. Via the most brutal realism and the most surprising fantasy, the stories in Acá el tiempo es otra cosa reveal a strange world and a solid storyteller [who writes] with remarkable control, but is capable of moments of intense madness.”—Mariana Enríquez, author of Our Share of Night and The Dangers of Smoking in Bed

“…Tomás Downey’s genius lies precisely in the fact that he’s never talking about other worlds, not even metaphorically. This is our world, only shifted a millimetre to the right, shaken ever so slightly, but ours…”—Munir Hachemi, Cuadernos hispanoamericanos

“Tomás Downey always surprises with his stunning imagination, his ability to create worlds in miniature (as maddening and solid as ours), his power of observation; with spare prose that is at once ambiguous and disturbing; with an inquiry into what we are and how we relate to one another.”—Luciano Lamberti

“…an amalgam of realist science fiction that’s more plausible than reality…with touches of comedy and nightmare.”—Daniel Gigena, La Nación

“The reader moves through discomfort, cheery complicity, a certain revulsion, and ongoing unease, silently perceiving that what happens here, in the stories in El lugar donde mueren los pájaros, poses questions from a place that suspends all answers. A precise and controlled style; intelligent and original plots in which more is shown than said; and an effective use of narrative tension are some of the reasons it’s worth visiting this literary universe.”—Laura Cardona, La Nación