TROUT, BELLY UP

A set of linked stories spotlighting the ironies and precarity of life in rural Guatemala.

Fuentes’ first book in English is slim but potent, focused on poor farmers and their struggles to get by amid threats from wealthier and better-armed interlopers. Central among them is Don Henrik, a well-traveled plantation owner who’s trying to improve his standing: In the opening title story, he starts farming rainbow trout, a project that proves surprisingly challenging for the narrator, a farmhand whose affair distracts him from his task of keeping the fish alive. The metaphors aren’t subtle (invasive species, emotional and environmental sustainability, etc.), but Fuentes (via Jones’ crisp translation) delivers the story with a Carver-esque bluntness. In “Dive,” Henrik recalls his addict brother, Mati, and a foolhardy act of his while snorkeling, which makes for a taut set piece about the way one family member’s questionable behavior radiates outward. In the closing story, “Henrik,” the title character risks being forced to give up his land, as a group of thugs' gentle suggestions morph into more terrifying high-pressure extortion tactics. The tone in the stories isn’t strictly foreboding: “Out of the Blue, Perla” features a cow raised to behave like a dog, including walking on its hind legs, baffling some gunmen; the mood of growing threat is undercut by a note of absurdity. And in the tender, atmospheric “Whisky,” Mati is in recovery and raising a family, kept company by a dog whose disappearance has an unexpectedly deep impact. Still, something dark always lurks just around a turn in these stories, and though Fuentes tends to avoid describing violence itself, he harrowingly captures how the threat of it intensifies and deepens. His climaxes are the moments when, as one character puts it, “the wolves take off their sheep’s clothing.”

A smart, controlled debut from a writer who addresses poverty and criminality in a variety of registers.