The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Dangerous Virtues by Ana Mariá MoixGraham Fraser
Ana María Moix. Dangerous Virtues. Trans. Margaret E. W. Jones. Nebraska, 1997. 153pp. Paper: $10.00.
This translation marks the first appearance of Spanish writer Ana María Moix in English. Dangerous Virtues is a collection of five stories that alternates between interiorized semi-realism and Calvino-like fancy, exploring themes of isolation and disconnection between the protagonists and the world around them. By personifying the stock phrases and personalities of folk tales (doomed forever to repeat their well-told actions) in “Once Upon a Time,” or by following a personified Problem’s embarrassment at being selected to be but a sexual difficulty, Moix’s metafictional cleverness overwhelms her more serious themes of entrapment and frustration. The other three stories of her collection, although inventive and even at points surreal, provide a much more favorable environment for Moix’s explorations of estranged consciousness. Gazes and mirrors dominate these pieces, as protagonists substitute looks for words, seeking visual rather than verbal connection with the world. In the title story—which is told through layer upon layer of intricate indirection, making the recounted events as hermetically puzzling in the telling as they are in substance—two women who never speak but only gaze upon each other from a distance share a profound and exclusive communication. The final story, knowingly but nevertheless ambitiously entitled “The Dead,” charts a hostess’s growing psychic alienation from her husband, her dinner guests, and even at points, reality. In a flower-filled room with mirrored walls, she drifts about her party like a strange fish lost in Dali’s aquarium: “At first, she doesn’t see herself; she doesn’t find herself among the faces, backs, and reflected flowers. She doesn’t find her face in the surface that is getting more and more misty with smoke and diffuse colors . . .” Like her subjects, Moix’s writing is intricate and self-consciously poised, but her poise conceals mysterious, self-mirroring depths. With Dangerous Virtues, Jones’s graceful translation allows English readers their first glimpse into Moix’s intricate and unsettling hall of mirrors. [Graham Fraser]