“Es curioso ver cómo los peces pueden influir en el ánimo de las personas. Cuando me aficioné a las Carpas Doradas, aparte del sosiego que me causaba su contemplación, siempre buscaba algo dorado para salir vestido de mujer en las noches. Ya sea una vincha, los guantes o las mallas que me ponía en esas oportunidades. Pensaba que llevar puesto algo de ese color podía traerme suerte. Tal vez salvarme de un encuentro con la Banda de los Matacabros, que rondaba por las zonas centrales de la ciudad. ”

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Una peste extraña fulmina paulatinamente a los habitantes de una gran ciudad. Rechazados por sus semejantes, algunos enfermos no tienen siquiera un lugar donde terminar sus días. Un peluquero, que hasta entonces ha regentado con grandes esfuerzos un célebre salón de belleza, decide dar refugio a los moribundos. Aficionado a los peces exóticos que en sus acuarios decoran el salón, el peluquero acaba convirtiendo su salón en un moridero medieval. ¿Qué mal diezma a los huéspedes del improvisado enfermero, carente, al parecer, de motivos filantrópicos? Con el tiempo, ya sólo los peces multicolores serán testigos indiferentes de su dedicación, cercana a la santidad verdadera.

Mario Bellatin's "Beauty Salon" is advertised as a novella, but it is, I think, more like a short story for two reasons. First, it can be read very quickly and without much thought. Second, the story is basic and very little happens in terms of character development.

In the story, the narrator becomes the caretaker for several people who are infected with an unknown plague. Most readers, including me, take the plague to be an extremely fast and virulent strain of AIDS. The narrator simply takes care of these people in his converted beauty salon but he too falls victim.

Although I did not particularly like Albert Camus' "The Plague," I was completely enamored with José Saramago's "Blindness." The publisher's comparison to these two works on the back cover do not fit, in my opinion. The simple plots might be similar, but "Beauty Salon" does not leave the reader with very much, unfortunately.

In the version translated by David Shook identified simply as Shook on the front cover, he says cryptically and rather ridiculously in his translator notes, "Reader, I have taken liberties." ( )

Mario Bellatin's novel (novella, really) provides a reading experience that simultaneously humanizes and distances his central character. The unnamed narrator who ran a successful beauty salon, turns his salon into a home for the dying when a plague hits his community. There are clear parallels to the AIDS epidemic: dying people abandoned by families or lovers, no hope of effective treatment, and "residents" who have long been conditioned to see themselves as a sort of fringe society—a strong decorative fringe that challenges expectations about masculinity.

Before the plague, the narrator would go out cruising in the evenings with other gay, male cross-dressers. They tended to spend their time in the darker streets, but their dress and their attitudes were brilliant.

Now that the narrator has created "the Mortuary," he goes out seldom, particularly after he realizes that he, too, is dying of the plague. Instead, he considers the deaths of those around him, the faster and slower courses the plague can take, the value of living longer when that also means longer suffering.

This is a book offers a meditation that one can easily read in a single sitting, at least in terms of its length. Embracing what one has read, coming to terms with it, takes significantly longer.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own. ( )

Breve, minimista, austero, y muy, muy triste. Nuestro protagonista administra un mortidero mientras una plaga -- nunca nombrada, pero es imposible ignorar su semejanza al SIDA -- diezma la población de una ciudad. La voz de la novela es directa, un reportaje desde el abismo carente de sentimentalidad o esperanza. Leemos algo de la vida nocturna, algo de placer sensual, y mucho sobre la muerte, que parece estar presente en cada página del libro. Para lo que es, la novela está bien hecha: se puede decir que este libro cumple sus metas. Pero es un proyecto tan limitado -- y leerlo es una experiencia tan deprimente -- que no puedo decir que me gustó mucho como libro. En todo caso, fue interesante leerlo durante una cuarentena global provocado por una enfermedad que ha acabado más de un millón de vidas en solo unos cuantos meses. Si vas a leer "Salón de Belleza", ten tus antidepresivos a mano. ( )