Like a soft bag bag full of marbles; each piece in this well-crafted collection of short fiction is tight, translucent, and colorful as a glass ball. Cortezar's short fiction is better focused than his longer work, specifically Hopscotch which I found slightly gimmiky and annoying. This work, however manages to be incredibly solid and satisfying without being shallow or facile (a difficult task). Cortezar's style here is reminiscent of some of the short fiction of Italo Calvino encapsulating that same sense of crushingly beautiful tragi-comedy that leaves you wondering wether you're awake or asleep. The stories range in subject from a family trying to protect an aging mother from the death of her son by keeping up a false correspondence for years to a man who falls in love during a three-month traffic jam just outside of Paris. Cortezar explores the same old stuff in the stories: the complexity of human relationships, the bizarre quirks of tenderness, everyone's ultimate solitude. The thing is: he does it in a way that makes me examine "the same old stuff" in a new way; like looking into the tiny bubbles in the glass of that marble. Really, he says in words something that cannot be said in words. If that makes any sense. The work is funny and lovely and surprising and, on the whole, one of the finest collections of short fiction I have found.

My favorite Cortazar short story is "The Southern Thruway" with its hilariously dry epigraph:
Sweltering motorists do not seem to have a history...As a reality a traffic jam is impressive, but it doesn't say much.-Arrigo Benedetti, L'Espresso, Rome, 6.21.64
Cortazar reminds me of Kafka and Nabokov, Calvino and of course Borges, but also of an author who came after him Antonio Tabucchi who also writes strange stories.
Cortazar like these others is known for being a fabulist, an inventor of worlds, and he is, but what makes any fiction wonderful is how true it is. Sometimes the fantastic is a more direct route to the real nature of reality than is the more obvious realist one. Thats not to say Cortazar writes sci fi but just that he always approaches the world in a way that is surprising and so he renders the ordinary extraordinary better even than those that I mentioned along side of him. Some of the stories are light and some dark and they all have the allure of upsetting the normal flow of things which we know as reality, at which time the curious begin to question the nature of that reality and perhaps in their questioning begin to search among the wreckage of the old reality for a different kind of order, one that no one had previously thought existed. What better task is there for an author or reader than to search for new realities?
Originally published in 1966, English edition 1973.

este es el libro que sigue al maravilloso Queremos tanto a Glenda. y comienza con una absolutamente genial carta a Glenda Jackson sobre su libro anterior. de alli en adelante, los laberintos de Cortazar (que muchas veces, en vez de ser con vueltas, son un simple pasillo largo y oscuro) empizan a atraparte. mis favoritos de este libro: Satarsa (un cuento lleno de palindromas), Pesadillas, la ya nombrada carta (Botella al mar). recomendado para amantes del genero y quienes hayn leíd Queremos tanto a Glenda.

the best argentine writer after Borges, Cortazar is a surrealistic and beautiful writer, full of peotry and games. In this book you can see his passion for the Jazz in the short storie El perseguidor.

ESPANOL Este libro presenta un analisis interesante sobre la interpretacion de Rayuela por Julio Cortazar. Beneficioso para entender algunas ideas del escritor. Lo recomiendo altamente si le gusto Rayuela y si le interesa re-leerlo.

ENGLISH This book presents an analysis very interesting on an interpretation of the book Rayuela by Julio Cortazar. It is very positive and helps big-time when trying to understand what the author wrote. I recommend it if you liked Rayuela and would maybe like to re-read it.

Los premios Julio Cortazar

He estado leyendo o tratando de leer este libro de manera infructuosa por casi 20 días y me he dormido en 5 ocasiones, me he atorado en otras tantas y al final de la pagina 216 en el primer día de navegación del barco he decidido lanzarme por la borda y dejar la tripulación aburrida a su suerte para. Este libro pasara a ocupar el lugar de los arrumbados en mi lista de libros que trate de leer. En verdad creo que el libro es mas bien una preparación para algo mas grande como lo fue Rayuela, pero me decepciono encontrarme con un Cortazar que aun no tenia dominada la técnica del juego, que aun buscaba como darle rienda suelta a su voz literaria. Este libro podría ser interesante para alguien que este haciendo alguna disertación sobre Cortazar pero no para un lector común que busca un escape, una diversión, un juego, una enseñanza, y no dormirse en la mitad de la pagina. No hay mucho que decir sobre este libro....

Luis Mendez