The Shadow of the Mammoth
Stories
Giving life to the incidental, the forgotten, and the ignored, The Shadow of the Mammoth, Fabio Morábito’s collection of eighteen distinctive, heartbreaking, and quirky tales, skews the intricacies of existence and compassion through wayward prisms.
In “The Nail in the Wall,” wall space suitable for a Walter Lazzaro painting is instead admired for the perfection of a protruding nail that awaits the image’s hanging, prompting a young couple to quarrel about the intimacy of the negative space in their home and their relationship. “Extras” remarks on the importance of setting, periphery, and the easing of the uncanny as it pertains to the roles extras play on film sets, flipping the script for a documentary about extras—that A-list celebrities themselves want to be extras in. In “The Sadness of Translation,” a look at the difficulty of translating poetry sparks parallels between a young translator and a Latin professor, each culpable of mistranslating each other’s motives outside of their academic palaver.
Not every story is weird, per se; Morábito’s emotive literary slabs touch on universal themes that are not always accessible in daily life. Because of their attention to the spaces between thoughts, the stories read like cerebral asides and emotional bookmarks. They have a warming effect, gathering together tiny hunches about the collective consciousness. Their themes bind humanity together under one strange parasol. As the tales wind toward snappy conclusions, their characters’ motivations become familiar. Indeed, each tale is swollen with effortless wisdom.
The Shadow of the Mammoth is a fantastic short story collection that bursts with sympathetic personalities and outsiders’ insights.
Reviewed by
Ryan Prado
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
