Electrodomésticos: Stories

Electrodomésticos: Stories

Inspired, in part, by Moira McCavana’s own family history in Bilbao, these inventive short stories inhabit the Spanish Basque Country in the fifty years following the Spanish Civil War.  “In Guernica, there isn’t a tree, on the outskirts of town, from whose gnarled arms dangle felt berets. The hats are not a range of colors—they are not blue, cream, maroon, brown, orange, violet, or green. The hats did not begin as buds, as specks of folded felt that uncurled as the tree developed from a sapling, and matured.” So begins the opening story of Electrodomésticos, the debut collection from Moira McCavana. In these stories, characters struggle with allegiances both political and personal, their attempts at independence coinciding with the region’s growing nationalist fervor. Exquisitely attuned to the nuances of familial and cultural history, and beautifully blending pastoral and historical sensibilities, Electrodomésticos is a stunning debut about place, language, and identity, from a promising new voice. Green Apple Books's "Apple a Month" Selection "McCavana reminds us that small gestures bear great weight. . . . Quiet but impeccable." — Kirkus Reviews “In Moira McCavana’s evocative stories, the Basque country situates itself within two regions of a capacious literary imagination: one is gritty, authentic and profoundly human; the other lies in the realm of memory, hope and Calvino-esque invention. McCavana roams these rough-hewn, contested territories with daring and compassion.” —Ken Kalfus, National Book Award finalist for  A Disorder Peculiar to the Country “In her stunning debut collection, Moira McCavana invites readers into the soul of Basque country. Electrodomésticos explores those regions—geographic, cultural, emotional—that shape the diverse lives of characters. McCavana writes with extraordinary insight, poignant humanity, and the quiet, lyric beauty of timeless poetry.” —Bret Anthony Johnston, author of Remember Me Like This " Electrodomésticos is rigorously interested in our love for places which never quite yield their secrets to us. McCavana makes language uncanny and intimate, a system of symbols which bears the keys to both estrangement and belonging." —Lillian Fishman, author of Acts of Service Originally from Massachusetts, Moira McCavana has spent much of her writing life responding to inherited family histories from Northern Ireland and Northern Spain. Her first published short story, “No Spanish,” was selected for the 2019 O. Henry Prize Anthology. Her work has appeared in Guernica, The Drift, Harvard Review, and The London Magazine and has been adapted to audio as an Audible Original story. In August 2022, she was the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship. Recuerdos: Guernica In Guernica, there isn’t a tree, on the outskirts of town, from whose gnarled arms dangle felt berets. The hats are not a range of colors—they are not blue, cream, maroon, brown, orange, violet, or green. The hats did not begin as buds, as specks of folded felt that uncurled as the tree developed from a sapling, and matured.  New hats do not sprout each spring, and if you happen to walk beneath the tree, and you find that a hat is hanging at the right height to lightly brush the top of your head, you are not just welcome to take it, to loosen it with careful force from the end of the branch, and you are not just welcome to wear it, with pride however quiet or loud, on your walk back into town.  The tree was not born from the scraps of a single beret that rode the top of a single bald head as it fled the planes that flew over Guernica, less than a year into the Civil War. Weeks after the bombs had all been dropped, and the man had separated from his hat, and separately, both had burned, the tree did not grow from the small germ of felt that had sunk into the earth.   Now, when the sun turns down on the end of the day, the tree of hats does not stand, its back to the darkening sky, like an old and benevolent puppet-master, like a great keeper of the world.  ~ It doesn’t, because in Guernica, there isn’t a tree. I’ve been honest this whole time; there are no many-colored hats, no buds that bloom. The outskirts of town are pitted with sheet metal warehouses, auto shops, and with scattered piles of sand and wood.  When the bombing took place, a whole block of buildings collapsed at the same time that the first beret-wearing men hit the ground. As the separate pieces of them—those buildings and those men—merged to unity, the berets slid straight from heads into piles of rock, and from that rock, nothing grew.