Reviewed by Sam Carter

Just as “Guiding the Ivy” sets the tone in opening The Scent of Buenos Aires, the career-spanning collection of Hebe Uhart’s short stories, so does its premise undergird the author’s entire life. Uhart, who died little more than a year ago, was both generous and open-hearted on and off the page, but life never trampled or confused this legendary figure of contemporary Argentine literature. Her stories instead exhibit a clarity that emerges from roots in the everyday rather than the extraordinary, and as a result they resemble plants that are perfectly adapted to pots. They are not merely decorative: they steadily, unobtrusively oxygenate the world around them…