SOURCE: “Moving Beyond Gothic: The Different Reality of María Luisa Bombal,” in Tribune Books, September 10, 1995, pp. 6-7.

In the following assessment of Bombal's English translations of La última niebla and La amortajada Mesic contends that, despite shortcomings, these works “both awake a feeling of genuine discovery, of minds and hearts not borrowed from European literature but indigenous to a New World of thought and feeling.”

A frightened young bride dressed in black, who has heard the marriage ceremony hastily pronounced by a bored priest, is taken by her silent groom to his remote hacienda. The train stops at a station where the couple alone disembark. A carriage is waiting, and as it rocks them across a “dreary brown plain where great brambles stand motionless” the bride sees “the mist actually pushing forward to meet the carriage.” “I'm so happy,” she murmurs—surely in a effort to convince...