Collect Call

Collect Call, by the Chilean/Canadian prose writer Leandro Urbina, is the story of one day in the life of a Chilean exiled in Montreal, a sort of a counterbalance to the encompassing sagas of Isabel Allende. The critic and writer Antonio Skármeta, best known as the author of the novel in which the movie II Postino [The Postrnan] was based, described Collect Call by Leandro Urbina, as “an immensely original novel within Chilean literature,

with a particular sense of humour…It starts as a journey that soon becomes one of the most demythologizing novels of the Chilean exile, a poignant satire, a self-criticism of the worries of the exile, a funny odyssey of drunkenness and sexual promiscuity…a work of dark humour which, conventionally, ought to have been a tragedy….Like few Latin-American novels, Collect Call explores the soul of its female characters, searches for their inner motivations, the complex network of their feelings and their desperate desire for security. John J. Hasset writes: “the novel’s crisp and laconic prose takes us on a whirlwind journey into the dark regions of political exile…Urbina’s Collect Call deals with two important issues —the ever present human need for authenticity and honesty, even in a situation of personal failure that reminds us of our limitations as human beings, and the topic of immigration, exile and uprooting that seems to pervade contemporary life and culture, especially in a multicultural country like Canada.