From the renowned writer Adriana Lunardi, winner of the Açorianos, National Library for Works in Progress, Fumproarte and Icatú de Artes awards, Contos skéticos is born as an ode to literature and its artistic expansions.
Adriana Lunardi's writing brings with it a cunning that places us, always suddenly, in the company of the imperfect beauties that arise from everyday tragedy – there, from which one cannot escape, the delight and despair of coexisting; there, when there is always a self, an other.
Suspicious and at his side, we accompany a foreigner on the beach, create characters, lose our breath completely during a pandemic, and our sight in old age. In his nine short stories and a note from fate, we meet erratic children, even more erratic elderly people, vain and self-flagellated writers, and glimpse what they call the 'madness that afflicts geniuses and artists,' but we don't even come close to touching it—it's impossible. We look into the eye of mystery because, in Skeptical Tales, there is no fourth wall in the face of grief, of the last images one has of someone. Everything can be tarnished. A child, literature, Paris.
But what makes Skeptical Tales an exceptional collection are the extraordinary images Lunardi is able to create from the trivial elements of existence. His fascinating narrative stems not only from masterful skill, but also from his profound intimacy with words. The thread that runs through the stories in this book doesn't stretch and isn't intended to be linear; it prefers to break and seek mending, to make knots and skeins; its nature, however, is unequivocal, and it says: I am here to create literature.
"In these stories, Adriana Lunardi—far from fads and with a place all her own in Brazilian literature—uses doubt and irony as instruments to explore a reality that glossaries, pharmaceuticals, or various tricks no longer seem capable of handling. Sharply, she confronts us with our ridiculousness, but also reveals the beauty we have when the lights dim and affectation grows weary: then, 'a hint of tenderness, a shiver of poetry,' is saved." - Adriana Lisboa
