El agua está helada

Sonora State Institute of Culture (ISC, in Spanish), 2006.
Literature: Fiction (short stories).
Author: Cristina Rascón Castro
Sonora State Short Story Award, 2005.

“Reading Cristina Rascón has been dazzling, for several reasons. The first and most important, her prose is transparent and ludic. Second, her ability to say between the lines much more than is portrayed. And third, her rediscovery of a Spanish language, as it happens with writers who have lived a long time within a foreign language, she discovers and makes us remember a rare and delicious fruit. Cristina lays in front of our eyes a culture, a view, a language and a scenario that are as foreign for the author as for the reader. They become endearing due to the magic of a very skilled story teller that works from her own surprise, producing an exotic as well as poetic atmosphere. Like Sei Shonagon, medieval Japanese author, who Cristina portrays as a writer jealous of her rival, Murasaki Shikibu, and of her own servant’s talent, Cristina has written not just a short stories’ book, but a well scented pillow book, full of fascinating secrets: “It is not difficult to feel how words have no value, how a smile can accomplish more and how the night would make no difference (…) The water is cold, like my body among the waves”.” – Eve Gil

Some short stories from El agua está helada::