A while back I got a recommendation for the A City in Short Fiction anthologies. I had read the Leeds one a while back here and got The Book of Rio this year in the TBR. The Book of Rio brings together ten short stories that go beyond the postcards and snapshots, and introduce us to real residents of Rio. From stories that touch on life in the favelas to happenings around the Copacabana and lesser-known parts of the city of Rio. The stories pulsate around music, sex and everyday activities of ordinary Rio inhabitants. From a female student working as an escort who is more interested in texting her friends than in the client who is with her to two flat-hunters who end up viewing a bullet-ridden flat together to the electrician musing on why he has to be in the big city at all and why the longest bridge project he is involved in has to be built in the first place to a bored woman with a successful career but with no lover who dabbles into the occult in a bid to find love. The stories in The Book of Rio are full of inhabitants who are muddling through in the big city. The stories leave no lasting impression, very much like inhabitants in most big cities who are lost in it.
2.4/5
