The translator of Angelina Muniz-Huberman’s
collection of stories “Enclosed Gardens” warns us that in translating this work
from Spanish to English, much has been lost.
Of course, this is the case with all works of translation, but this
translator goes out of her way to explain that what we are reading is a thin facsimile
of the original.
This is what makes this book such poor reading. Without the background in Spanish and
Mexican literature, whose allusions abound in this small collection, these stories appear
to be little more than one more venture into Spanish and Latin American magic
realism, and who needs that?
If you have read Gabriel García
Márquez, Isabel Allende, and Luis Borges, you don’t really
need to read Enclosed Garden. It seems derivative
and second rate.
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