This book contains thirteen short stories that were of varying interest to me. 

Ampuero comes out swinging with Auction, which had a bit of a Hostel feel to it. For a short story it ended up being a hard read because I find

r*pe

scenes too hard to read, especially scenes done in such a brutal fashion. Auction would've been a disgusting but good story even without that paragraph, and while it was only a paragraph, Ampuero wrote it so vividly that it genuinely stopped me in my tracks. 

The short stories that followed (

Monster, Griselda, Nam, Pups, Blinds, Christ and Passion

) were mostly just ok and didn’t leave much of an impact. 

The next hard-hitter for me was Mourning. This had one specific similarity to Auction but I didn’t feel like it was written as vividly, and the rest story was a sad one. The treatment of poor Maria was horrifying but the ending was good and left you wondering if it was real or not. This didn’t need to be more than a short story and left enough of an impact as it was. 

A next short story (

Ali

) was a miss for me, but Coro was good and it had a ‘Desperate Housewives’ kind of feel to it.

Bleach

was another miss for me but the final short story Other was an interesting one to me, personally.