A Hammock Beneath the Mangoes: Stories from Latin America.

• Author: Silva, Aroldo Souza

Although limited in scope, Thomas Colchie's new anthology provides the English-speaking reader with a large number of well chosen stories from Latin America. Colchie has chosen to include material only from the River Plate region, Chile, Brazil, Mexico and the Caribbean, which means he has left out some of Latin America's most outstanding writers, including Nobel Prize winner Miguel Angel Asturias, from Guatemala, and Mario Vargas Llosa, from Peru. He includes Columbian Gabriel Garcia Marquez--rather sneakily--in the section on the Caribbean.

For the most part, this anthology offers few surprises. From the River Plate come stories by Quiroga, Cortazar, Borges, Onetti, and Bioy Casares--most of them works commonly found in Spanish-language anthologies. Colchie has selected only one woman author to appear in this section, Armonia Somers--a curious choice considering the large number of first-rate women writers from the region. He has also included a piece by Manuel Puig, known far better as a novelist than as a short-story writer. This particular story, "Relative Humanity 95%" picks up on familiar Puig themes--parents' terror of their children's sexuality, pop culture, urban angst, aging, the demands of the body, lack of communication between men and women--and is a welcome addition to the collection.

From Chile Colchie has used just one story, Isabel Allende's "Toad's Mouth," about a prostitute who invents a game in which she lies on her back and allows men to toss coins between her legs; if a man's coin lands in the "mouth," he wins two hours alone with her. Allende has written some wonderfully beautiful and poetic stories, but "Toad's Mouth" hardly gives the reader a feel for the author's talent or the magic and energy of most of her writing. Chile, with its rich and varied literary tradition, has produced some of Latin America's best short-story writers. Jose Donoso and Jorge Edwards immediately come to mind. One cannot help but wonder why Colchie chose not to include them, as well.

The best represented area is Brazil. Colchie has provided a good selection of Brazilian authors, including the...