A novel made of correlated stories, set in a rural environment with fantastic and gothic overtones. The pieces of the puzzle that form The Beasts take place in a period  that goes from the 30s to the 50s in a small village in the Pampas, where working the land is the sole activity. Its only hangout is home to partying and death, fantastic and unexpected events. The entire area is oozing a naturalized violence that permeates every corner. Something that is not questioned or exacerbated, but is a constitutive part of the relationships between the characters and the poor place where they live. Women are abused and laborers exploited. At least until small acts of rebellion or strange events occur that break into everyday life, open up possibilities and, sometimes, twist destinies.  The stories of The Beasts are captivating, both for the stealth-like construction of the characters and their relationships, as for the creation of atmospheres and situations which unexpectedly explode into brutal actions.

With an implacably wild oral language fully steeped into the expressions of the area, each story adds one more piece to the horror of a gothic puzzle that is the life of a peasant village.

 

Praise for Las bestias:

“Without asking permission (from whom?), or sitting modestly at the table of political incorrectness/correctness to debate what can or should be written in Argentine literature, Victoria García does the most vital thing that can be done: she kicks the board and writes whatever she fancies. And the results is vibrant and beautiful, exuberant and brutal. She writes wild literature.” – Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

“She just published a book, her name is Vicky García and hails from Laborde, Córdoba. She wrote some hallucinating stories, set in the countryside, but a very gore countryside, bizarre, bloody too, and very very good: I  absolutely recommend them!” – Selva Almada

“The Beasts is a collection of horror stories and cruel imaginations. In the gaucho tradition, this series expands the genre and weaves a Pampean gothic universe not spared by monsters, cannibals and crimes. The three levels of the Danse Macabre proposed by Stephen King are present: terror, horror and repulsion… Vicky García has written an extraordinary and original book, whose vision of the pampas is a true nightmare, seductive and terrible.” – Diego Incardona

 “The characters in The Beasts devour their victims, rape, drink, recommend themselves to ghostly apparitions, levitate, vomit frogs, give birth to animals, and assume or rebel against an idea of women that makes them both an object of desire and a reason for contempt. García, who has a great talent for reproducing the orality of her characters, joins with these stories a number of authors (Federico Falco, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, Cesar Aira, Marina Closs) who do not cast an orientalising gaze on the countryside.” – Patricio Pron, Babelia, El País

“In The Beasts, everything is normal —that is to say, violent— between the laborers and the bosses, democratically attended to by the transvestite La Cigarrera, the events of the town are discussed, such as the drought that complicates the payment of the loans. Until suddenly someone gives birth to an animal, or participates in a cannibalistic party, or suffers a lethal attack by chickens…The Beasts mixes the countryside  tradition with fantastic horror. The result is an original exploration of the local language to tell of village life as nightmare.” – Gabriela Esquivada, Infobae

 

224 páginas – Original Edition: Spanish/Argentina (Contramar, 2021)