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Juan Manuel de Prada, Clarín, abril, '97
	If intelligence were not so miserly with our critics, The Moment of the Unicorn, the third volume of stories published in Spain by this Argentine author, would have been heralded as one of the most joyful and enduring signs of the vitality of the genre. Those of us who had frequented the pages of Cradle Song to a Housefly had already discovered a writer very talented in the creation of disquieting, oppressive atmospheres, a master at meting out mystery and at recuperating a tremulous or asphyxiating memory, an author who knew how to treat fatalism with a novel sense of humour and to endow the most trivial situations with a resonance disconcerting to the reader.... Norberto Luis Romero—and let no one attribute hyperbolic weaknesses to me— deserves to figure among our best contemporary writers of short stories. His prose, polished in the school of austerity, maintains tension in his style and a capacity for generating sensitive impressions which transcends the subject matter of his stories and always remains essential to the telling: it is the prose of a unique writer.
Fernando Iwasaki Cauti, Revista Renacimiento, Sevilla, '97
	The Moment of the Unicorn is a book which has all the virtues of the best works of its genre: complete and disturbing with appropriate intensity and written in a prose elegant and personal—without betraying his original language and without falling into cryptic and local jargon—and also with appropriate keys which give depth to Norberto Luis Romero's fantasy and originality. Romero, who has not yet rushed into the novel, is a strict cultivator of the story form; he musts be masking those anti-superficial reader mines with feed his pages. Romero is an archaeologist of detritus (moral) which underlies our existence. In his stories there are taxidermists, snipers, minotaur who get lost in the metropolitan labyrinth, men who rake for jewels in suburban sewers, explorers of garbage, impostors who sneak in like the woodworm, and intruders—several in his excellent, disturbing stories .
Juan Bonilla, El Mundo, La Esfera, junio, '98
	Norberto Romero is a good painter of disquieting atmospheres and anguished characters. His novel Signs of Decomposition (Valdemar) will make the most hardened reader uneasy: it is an obsessive tale of detailed terror. With the author's abilities he need only resort to the most precise cruelties. In the hands of anyone not careful with prose and details as he is, this story would have been converted into a cataract with What nonsense! proclaimed by the reader before the growing anguish which emanates from the work. Norberto Luis Romero arranges them to convert his first novel into an analysis of the moral and psychic disintegration of a character who, unfortunately for us, is hard to forget once the book has been closed.
Deian Vincent,C. Crenshaw, Fearless review, 9-11- 04
	If there is one thing the writing world could do more of it's short story collections. The short form can be varied, weird and always interesting. That can go for most short stories in general but for LAST NIGHT OF CARNIVAL it certainly rings true. The author has a nice turn of phrase and can certainly set the mood in his story, painting his scenes with just the right amount of words. The only downfall for me is the way some of the stories suddenly turn dark after setting up a nice introduction. But that's a personal thing. On the whole Norberto can hold a storyline and keep it going with subtle plot twists that are very evocative and erotic without being too exploitative or explicit. An enjoyable and different book and certainly one to curl up in bed with!
Matthew Ward, Skive Magazine, Australia, 1- 9- 04
	There are times when I truly wish I had learned another language when I was younger — spanish for instance — and as I commenced to read Norberto Luis Romero's Last Night Of Carnival that feeling of regret again crept over me. H.E. Francis' translation of Romero's short stories is simply marvellous. I asked myself: how good must it be in Norberto's original spanish tongue? Romero's stories are many things: dangerous, seductive, poignant, voyeuristic, sadistic, righteous, even pious. Sometimes these aspects manifest within the one story. In a doco I saw several years ago, Terry Jones of Monty Python fame paraphrased the poet Browning when he said that one artistic idea added to another artistic idea does not make a third artistic idea — it creates something magical, a star: Romero often blends two or more often opposing concepts to produce something quite heavenly and beautiful (even beautifully tragic, if that makes any sense). Whether or not the author intends to do this as part of a technique, I don't know, but it works all the same. Examples of Romero's 'star quality prose' include the stories 'The Last Mourner' (mother is a professional mourner, estranged daughter is a prostitute dying inside from despair); 'A Dream Of Mantises' (boy from a family of atheists exists in the strict world of a religious school but looks at pictures of saints and collects praying mantises instead of going to Mass); and 'The Tunnel Of Horrors' (12 year old carny girl more mature than older non-carny man who regrets his life). The themes in Last Night... struck me as very Catholic, which I am guessing the author, as a spanish-speaking Argentinean now living in Spain is (was?). In these stories ('The Statue Of The Angel' & 'A Dream Of Mantises') the author seems to struggle with the Catholic faith or the concept of God itself. This is epitomised by obligatory Catholic guilt, which in Romero's stories is often sexual in nature. 'Maria De La Soledad's Siesta' has a guilty young man behind a curtain spying on his spinster aunt while she masturbates with fruit; voyeurism again leads the reader through the peephole with 'Spy Ritual'; and in 'Last Night Of Carnival' (the short story), a married woman is seduced into the dark, sweaty night of Carnivale by young masked men who dance and prance and hope for more – for the woman, the guilt she feels dissipates into the silken lust she until recently only held for her betrothed. Add to this the unusual, like subterranean sewer dwellers collecting overworld abandoned baubles ('Jewels'), the sniper's apprentice learning the trade of killing ('Snipers'), and the well-to-do officeworker trapped in the train that just won't stop while creatures in the dark threaten to steal his few possessions ('The Seizure'). Here's a sample of Romero's talented use of prose and structural irony. It's from 'The Last Mourner'. An old lady is a keener (professional mourner). The old woman feels she is near death. At the same time her estranged daughter, a prostitute, is having sex with a male client. 'She understood at that instant that her own death was near since that dryness in her eyes was the unmistakable sign of the end. At that same moment in the city, a lump formed in her daughter’s throat, her heart shrank to a fist, an infinite sadness invaded her soul, and she began to cry. The man who lay on her nude body took those for tears of joy and, moved by his own powerful masculinity, left her a generous tip.' ['The Last Mourner', ps. 36-37.] Norberto Luis Romero has a knack of dropping the reader into a story, then taking them out at just the right time: as the flames are at their hottest, as the romance is at its zenith, as the sorrow just envelopes the protagonist. H.E. Francis, as translator, truly does justice to Romero's entrancing stories. Last Night Of Carnival is a beautiful book, which you will love to read again and again. (Now, let me at that 'Teach Yourself Spanish book)
River Walk Journal, 1- 2005
	Last Night of Carnival is a leap into the base qualities of the human condition. Romero does not mince words when describing the depravity of man, and woman. It is a rough ride from beginning to end, from snipers to child molesters to cultists and freaks. Not for the faint of heart, or any card carrying member of the moral majority, this collection of stories rips apart the proprieties of society, scoffing at the façade men create to hide their iniquities. Beginning with the first story, Romero's odd sense of humor is apparent. The sensual, and sometimes downright sexual, nature of his style shines through on each page. Once one taboo is observed, Romero moves on voraciously to the next, putting to light what the modest would prefer remained in darkness, if it must exist at all. His fascination with death and sexuality leave his text as a potential goldmine for the philosopher bent on finding the meaning of life. Each story has its own underlying theme, philosophical or moral dilemma, begging to be explored. To its bones, this is a love it or hate it text. Romero's fascination with the hidden darkness of society is interwoven in "Jewels", a tale of a subterranean culture that exists beneath the streets. The importance of maintaining one's wealth of treasures in this world is deeply embedded in every paragraph, leaving one to think of Tolkien's Gollum. "The Seizure", "The Tunnel of Horrors", and "The Woodworm Conspiracy" further explore the themes of either hidden culture, or greed. "Snipers", "The Last Mourner", "A Taxidermist's Diary", and "The Odor of Seaweed" explore death. From the young observing the instruments of death as a learning tool and the completely used life, to immortalizing the image of the grotesque and the pleas for death from the broken, Romero roams bone yards with ease. Each vignette has its own subtle spice, but the underlying flavor leaves the imprint of the author on each. Sexuality, from innocence to the perverse, is explored as familiar territory, masterfully drawing the reader into the mind, and perhaps more importantly, the emotions of each character. From the explicit nature of "María de le Soledad's Siesta", to the more obscure "The Moment of the Unicorn", Romero reaches deep into the sensual nature of man, yanking out the unspoken thoughts. Religion also falls to the writer's pen, with an exploration of the life of an atheist boy in a monastic community, "A Dream of Mantises". "The Statue of the Angel" explores a bizarre cult, through the eyes of their chosen one. Both also explore sexuality, either with the purpose of keeping light on the subject of abuses within faiths, or merely an acceptance of the fact that it is man's folly to assume that piety can rein in the libido on demand. Last Night of Carnival is a needed addition to the library of anyone with an open mind, and a fascination with exploring man's darker side. Romero skillfully weaves his tales, occasionally leaving a predictable conclusion, but never a disappointing one. Leaping Dog Press has performed a great service by placing these stories, previously scattered across the literary journal world, within one book cover.
Kara Kellar Bell, Laurahird.com, 2006, (Absinthe, Telecita)
	I did enjoy Norberto Luis Romero’s somewhat obliquely told ‘Telecita’. The Argentine writer, now a citizen of Spain, offers a tale of a bald-headed homeless woman and her nemesis who is dying in a great house nearby. The prose is fluid, poetic, engaging. And there’s a beautiful opening paragraph to the story ‘Upper and Lower Limbs’ by Greek writer Michel Faïs. Though I liked this story, it wasn’t one of the strongest pieces.

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