Violence

“Mauricio (The Eye) Silva,” and the excerpt from The Savage Detectives were both about abounding amounts of violence. In The Eye's story he rescues two boys from being castrated by breaking them out of and Indian brothel, and in The Savage Detective is a story about a man and his friend in war torn Africa.
Quite honestly I found both of these stories incredibly disturbing, first of all just the pure horror of the Indian ritual in The Eye's story was incredibly horrible, I don't see how you could justify doing that to children, even for a religion, that is crap and I have absolutely no problem with The Eye becoming violent to free the boys.
The Savage Detective was disturbing to me because right in the middle of Jacobo's journey in Liberia his Italian friend gets shot in the head, once again the soldiers in Liberia are not even over 20 yet they have to kill people and think about things like the fact that a dead body left in the street will probably be eaten by dogs.
Both of these stories were written by people who weren't the only main character. In "Mauricio (The Eye) Silva" the writer is hearing the story from The Eye, and in The Savage Detective Jacobo is constantly looking for his friend Belano, who at the end of the story walks away to an unknown fate.
While the ending of The Savage Detective is sad I was far more disturbed by the war going on between the children in the country. In both stories the death of kids and mutilation of young boys was by far more disturbing to me then any unknown fate or really anything that could happen to an adult. Kids should not have to deal with that kind of death and pain.

Better Half

These are two stories about love and loss, the first better half is about Anya a Russian girl who moved to America and married simply to get away from her old life. She married Ryan someone who in the first scene throws a jar full of coins at her. She originally met him at her job in a diner, he looked like the "most nervous person" out of his group of friends who were known to the diner's staff as "the Retard Party". She apparently married him as "a favor" and hoped for emotion later on.
Anya is in the process of becoming a resident, the constant fighting with her husband which eventually leads to his "accidental" abuse causes her to leave him and seek residency on her own. The latter part of the story focuses more on the fact that she has a restraining order out against Ryan and yet still goes after him. Her lawyer made it very clear that she shouldn't even talk to him, yet they still end up sleeping together on several occasions. Ryan tries to make the relationship work at several points in the story buying her a juicer towards the end and apologizing for his "accidental" abuse of her earlier but Anya seems to not want to hear it and actually picks a fight with Ryan over the gift.
The title Better Half is some kind of a misnomer because as Ryan pointed out Anya never thought the marriage "was real." The question in this story is whether or not Anya really needed Ryan. Sure she went back to him after several months of being separated with a restraining order still against him, but was that her still being in love with him (if she ever was at all) or was it simply because she was so lonely. Towards the end of the story Anya seems to regret her choice of leaving Ryan behind, she feels like she is seeing him constantly and always checking just to find out that he really is gone.