Latin American – MostlyFiction Book Reviews We Love to Read! Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:51:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.18 QUEEN OF AMERICA by Luis Alberto Urrea /2011/queen-of-america-by-luis-alberto-urrea/ Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:11:36 +0000 /?p=22142 Book Quote:

“Who is more of an outlaw than a saint?”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn (NOV 30, 2011)

Like its predecessor, The Hummingbird’s Daughter, Urrea’s sequel, Queen of America is a panoramic, picaresque, sprawling, sweeping novel that dazzles us with epic destiny, perilous twists, and high romance, set primarily in Industrial era America (and six years in the author’s undertaking). Based on Urrea’s real ancestry, this historical fiction combines family folklore with magical realism and Western adventure at the turn of the twentieth century.

It starts where the first book left off, and can be read as a stand-alone, according to the marketing and product description. However, I stoutly recommend that readers read The Hummingbird’s Daughter first. The two stories are part of a heroic saga; you shouldn’t cut off the head to apprehend the tale. You cannot capture the incipient magic and allure of Teresita without her roots in the first (and better) book. Urrea spent twenty years researching his family history, border unrest, guerrilla violence in the post-Civil War southwest, and revolution, so poignantly rendered in his first masterpiece.

At the center of both stories is the enigmatic and beautiful heroine, Teresita Urrea, named the Saint of Cabora by her legion of followers, when at sixteen, she was sexually assaulted, died, and subsequently rose from her coffin at her wake. She was denounced as a heretic by the Catholic Church but declared a saint by her devotees. An accomplished horsewoman and botanical shaman, she discovered the miracle of healing with her hands. Vanquishing pain and suffering with touch, Teresita has embodied her role with dignity, and sometimes despair, as she sacrifices her personal desires in order to combat social injustice and conquer disease.

Solitude is impossible, as she is followed by humble pilgrims and pursued by the Mexican government, greedy henchmen and dangerous lackeys. In the sequel, Teresita continues her journey and evolvement, with the primary question and theme of her life– whether a saint can find her life’s purpose and also fall in love. Along the way, she is entangled in conflicts between celebrity and simplicity, material wealth and spiritual wellbeing. Although she is idolized as a saint, she is, alas, human, with human emotions—such as lust, love, sorrow, pain, temptation. She makes mistakes, and is periodically confused and conflicted. It’s hard to be a saint when you’re made of flesh and blood and hormones.

After the Tomochic rebellion in Mexico in 1891, Teresita Urrea flees to the United States with her aging but ripe swashbuckler father, Tomas, known as Sky Catcher. She experiences romantic and cataclysmic love with an Indian mystic and warrior, eventually causing a serious breach with her father. When events spiral out of control, Teresita’s journey takes her further and further from her homeland.

From Tucson, to El Paso, St. Louis, San Francisco, New York, and places everywhere in-between, this sequel is a journey from poverty and pestilence to an unknown, glittering, bustling, and modern America, a place that offers new opportunities for immigrant Teresita—-prosperity, new romance, and celebrity. She is hunted by assassins, who claim she is the spiritual leader of the Mexican Revolution; harassed by profiteers, who want to arrange a consortium to exploit her healing abilities; and haunted daily by pilgrims everywhere, begging her to cure their ills.

Dickensian in scope, this ribald novel is peopled by the humble and the haughty, the meek and the mighty—pilgrims, prostitutes, yeoman, warriors, cowboys, vaqueros, royalty, revolutionaries, financial exploiters, gamblers, tycoons, corrupt politicians, drunks, rogues, and outlaws. It’s gritty, bawdy, tender, and tumultuous, and sometimes turgid, as it meanders down several long and winding paths. When it stalls at intervals, patience and the love of prose and colorful character will keep the reader fastened. This will appeal to fans of high adventure, mixed with folktale wisdom and mystical fantasy. Big, vast skies and rough and tumble travel, this is an unforgettable story of love, purpose, and redemption.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 4 readers
PUBLISHER: Little, Brown and Company; Import edition (November 28, 2011)
REVIEWER: Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Luis Alberto Urrea
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

 

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]]> BEFORE THE END, AFTER THE BEGINNING by Dagoberto Gilb /2011/before-the-end-after-the-beginning-by-dagoberto-gilb/ Wed, 09 Nov 2011 13:33:49 +0000 /?p=21957 Book Quote:

“The last time Ramiro Areyzaga was in Mexico was so long ago it was more like a fairy tale. . . A place of lush green shade, both a forest of trees and a jungle of huge waxy palm leaves, and a zocalo of marionettes and dancers, musicians and painters, with toys and balloons for the little ones and shawls for his grandparents. And of course the church, like none he’d ever seen, all the cool stone space, and God – which he never got over, so much so it stayed inside him, quietly, the rest of his life, like it was the word Mexico itself.”

Book Review:

Review by Devon Shepherd  (NOV 9, 2011)

Dagoberto Gilb’s latest book, Before the End, After the Beginning, although a slight collection, is loaded with insight and humor. It’s a book about identity, about the tension between limiting factors outside our control– our race, our class, our gender – and our complexity as individuals.

The collection opens with a disorienting story, “please, thank you,” about a Mexican-American man struggling to regain control of his body after a stroke. Uncomfortably dependent on the hospital staff, forced to face his physical vulnerabilities with tasks as mundane as taking a shower or balancing a checkbook, his psychological vulnerabilities also come to the fore. All he sees around him are minorities persecuted by a white majority trying to keep them down. Everyone from his adult children to the hospital staff shake their head, bemused by his racial conspiracy theories, but as his body heals, so do the lifelong wounds of prejudice, at least enough that he can advise Erlinda, a Mexican janitor, to rise above the ignorance around her so that the wounds she endures on account of her race won’t fester and leave deep and putrid scars.

While sometimes, an illness forces us to recede into ourselves, often times, it’s through our relationship with others that we struggle with undesirable aspects of our identity. “The Last Time I saw Junior,” a hot-headed Mexican must face his former self when an old buddy comes around and manipulates him (once again) into helping him. In “Cheap,” a Mexican musician is forced to face both his fiscal and emotional frugality when the pursuit of an unfairly low bid by a local contractor causes him to face the exploitation of other Mexicans, who he tries to help.

“Willows Village,” explores the other side of help – dependency. When Guillermo moves from El Paso to Santa Ana in search of a job that will support his young family, he has little choice but to stay with his aunt, his mother’s sister, Maggy, who, according to his mother, was “an all-spoiled this and did-all-bad-that” who got away with murder on account of her looks. Maggy lives in a tract housing development, called Willows Village, with a kitchen “loaded up like a mall gourmet store” and a bedroom as “beautiful as any hotel.”  Her husband is gone for weeks at a time on business and so Maggy manages her loneliness by keeping an unfortunate friend, Lorena. In exchange for room and board, Lorena does the errands Maggy doesn’t want to do and accepts Maggy’s capricious generosity with a smile and appropriate gratitude. While Guillermo pounds the pavement in search of a job, his dependency on Maggy and his mother, on Gabe, the man who employs him for a time, frustrates him, and with the wine always flowing at the house, it’s inevitable that tensions and resentments will come to a head, exposing the line between need and reliance.

Gilb explores the fraught dynamics of attractive women financially dependent on men through the eyes of the males who actually love them. In “Blessing,” a young man sets out to visit his high-school sweetheart, now married to a much-older man. Sexually unsatisfied, she visits him during the night, which prompts him to flee her house in the morning, putting him in the wrong place at the wrong time. In “Uncle Rock,” a young boy deals with having a mother who is beautiful enough to attract restaurant owners and engineers, but not white enough to be marriageable. With a precocious understanding of the sexual marketplace, he deflects a professional baseball player’s advances in favor of a man with modest means who worships the ground his mother walks on.

Perhaps our most poignant search for identity is in the face of death. In “Hacia Teotitlan,” a dying man journeys home to a Mexico that he remembers as a fairy tale with glorious churches. He rents a room that is too small for his body, and vows to discontinue his medication, resigning himself to dying with the same resignation of a stray dog. While he may not have found what he was looking for, he walks away with new ways of expressing his innermost desire – to be well.

Each of these stories is a wonderful meditation on identity and the pain we endure in the struggle to create ourselves. In 2009, Dagoberto Gilb suffered a stroke; these stories are the product of his recovery. Although judging from the simple power of this book, I’d say it definitely marks a return to form.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 5 readers
PUBLISHER: Grove Press (November 1, 2011)
REVIEWER: Devon Shepherd
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Dagoberto Gilb
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our short  review of:

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]]> THE MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK by Brando Skyhorse /2011/the-madonnas-of-echo-park-by-brando-skyhorse/ Thu, 23 Jun 2011 12:24:27 +0000 /?p=18774 Book Quote:

“Cleaning other people’s houses—their cherished possessions in both good and bad taste, the chipped dishes they eat off of, the ratty sofas they make love on, the unlevel, puckering floors they shed curly hairs on—is the most intimate relationship you can have with them. Yet every boss I’ve worked for wants that relationship to be unobtrusive to the point of being invisible. I have done my best to live my life in between those two places, intimacy and invisibility. Over the years I’ve absolved the remains of a thousand indiscretions without judgment, and have learned not to ask questions. Men staying over, friends moving in, children moving out; none of this is my concern. If my job is done right, what you find when you get home is a comforting antiseptic, fresh Band-Aid smell, spotless floors, and no evidence another human being, a cleaning lady, was ever there. ”

Book Review:

Review by Terez Rose (JUN 23, 2011)

The silent, overlooked residents of Los Angeles’ Echo Park neighborhood play the starring role in author Brando Skyhorse’s debut, The Madonnas of Echo Park. The novel, really more of a collection of short stories, each narrated by a different character, presents to the reader different facets of both the Mexican and Mexican-American experience in multicultural Los Angeles. Skyhorse, winner of the 2011 PEN/Hemingway Award for this novel, was born and raised in Echo Park. An Author’s Note sets the story (it should be noted, though, that the author calls it a fictionalized account). The sixth-grade Skyhorse, unaware of his Mexican heritage—he’d been told he was American Indian—inadvertently insulted a classmate, a girl named Aurora Esperanza. This novel, then, is his apology to her, his attempt to share with the public the world of Echo Park.

“Bienvenidos,” narrated by Aurora’s father Hector, starts the novel in a highly readable, compelling fashion. Hector, while born in Mexico, has been living in the U.S. his entire life and has no memory of Mexico. Without citizenship or papers, however, work options are limited, and when the restaurant he worked at for eighteen years closes, day labor is all he can find. While on a job, Hector witnesses a crime and faces a moral dilemma: help justice be served by reporting the crime, which will require him to reveal his own illegal immigrant status, or remain silent and thus avoid deportation. The conflict is sharp, affecting, and, like so many of the stories, packs an emotional punch.

One of Skyhorse’s greatest skills, besides writing stellar prose, is the ability to write convincingly from the perspective of a wide variety of characters. Ex-convicts, gang members, estranged mothers, rebellious, hopeful teens all ring true. In “Los Feliz,” we are in the head of Felicia, Hector’s ex-wife, who cleans houses while struggling to raise a teen daughter and assimilate into the wealthier culture that provides her income. Felicia shares her story without a trace of self-pity, while observing the clear dichotomy between her world and that of her clients.

“In Los Feliz, I needed to be invisible and inaudible. Mrs. Calhoun and I managed to communicate without ever saying a word to each other’s face. The massive double front doors made a loud, drawbridge sound when I unlocked them, letting her know I’d arrived. I’d shout “Good morning” in English until Mrs. Calhoun responded with an echoed “Good morning,” often from one of the bathrooms. That was my sign to start at the opposite side of the house. When I finished a room, Mrs. Calhoun stepped inside and read a magazine until I finished the next room. Like the arms on a clock, we moved together through six bathrooms, five bedrooms, the split kitchen, two “recreation” rooms (a name that confused me; I didn’t have a room to create things in, let alone “re”-create them), and a living room as big as Aurora’s school cafeteria. We could spend the day inches apart and never see each other.”

Skyhorse does not vilify the wealthy in any way, and the conflict remains clear, blameless, in the subtle tension behind Felicia’s interactions, or lack thereof, with her client. Less convincing, however, is the friendship that blossoms between Felicia and Mrs. Calhoun after a year of strained formality. Mrs. Calhoun suffers from an emotional malaise that never quite gets pinned down. Depression? Ennui? Fear of being left alone? Agoraphobia? Marital strife? As a reader closer to Mrs. Calhoun’s description than Felicia’s, I found it annoyingly murky. For all the marvelous work Skyhorse has done in bringing the Mexican-American characters and their friends to life, this segment of the population, the wealthy white woman, struck me as a shallow, half-finished depiction. Which, given the story’s intent, still manages to be appropriate. Felicia’s English is self-admittedly poor, so it would be difficult to imagine her fully understanding what made Mrs. Calhoun tick. A special friendship? Harder to buy.

Petty gripes aside, this is a very important chapter and story, as the reader learns the full backstory of who the “Madonnas” of Echo Park were. Felicia and her daughter Aurora were among a group of mothers and daughters who liked to dress up like the singer Madonna and dance to her music in the street. Tragically, at one such event, the group gets caught in gang crossfire, in which a three-year-old girl is killed. This pivotal scene has long term repercussions and is the link that ties together so many of the novel’s stories, in startling and sad ways.

One of the most outstanding stories in the collection is “Rules of the Road.” Bus driver Efren Mendoza has been marvelously rendered, so achingly real and human, I feel like I know the man, and I respect him, even as I don’t wholly like him. Having left home at fourteen in order to evade membership in the gang both his brother and father belong to, he has fought to earn a respectable place in society, even at the risk of becoming hardened, unsympathetic.

“My salary of $21.27 an hour relies on my punctuality (I carry a back-up watch; you are penalized if you are one minute late for your shift). It’s a fair wage, one we had to go on several strikes—five during my time—to protect. Those socialist Che-worshiping Reconquistadoras complained these strikes hurt poor Mexican workers who cannot afford a car the most. You’re a Mexican, they say, trying to bond with me by speaking Spanish. How can you turn against your own kind? they say. But they aren’t my kind. They’re not Americans. They’re illegals, and the benefits to law-abiding Americans like me outweigh whatever inconveniences these people face breaking our laws.”

When things go wrong on one of Efren’s shifts, the reader feels it all: the shock, the frustration that this is not how things in his world are supposed to go, his moral and professional dilemma, the troubling but very real conclusion. Great stuff. I will never forget this story.

The Madonnas of Echo Park is a vivid, intricately woven story of eight disparate voices that come together to portray a once-invisible neighborhood steeped in cultural identity, violence, incidental beauty, now caught in the grips of change brought by time and gentrification. Spanning thirty years and stories from three generations, filled with emotional heft and bittersweet truths, along with a dollop of magical realism, Skyhorse’s debut serves up satisfying fare indeed.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 34 readers
PUBLISHER: Free Press (February 8, 2011)
REVIEWER: Terez Rose
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Brando Skyhorse
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Previous Pen/Hemingway winners:

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Memoir:

]]> DESTINY AND DESIRE by Carlos Fuentes /2011/destiny-and-desire-by-carlos-fuentes/ Sun, 30 Jan 2011 15:02:23 +0000 /?p=15759 Book Quote:

“She was the object-woman, something volunteered, made for the pleasure — that first night — only of Jericó and Josué, Castor and Pollux, here and now again the children of Leda, whore to the swan, born in this instant of the same egg, the Dioscuri in the act of being born, crushing the flowers and grass, shattering the eggs of the swan so that from her would be born love and conflict, power and intelligence, the tremor in the thighs, the fire on the roofs, the blood in the air.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (JAN 30, 2011)

Wow! This quotation should indicate why I both reveled in this rich and wonderful book and yet had such trouble getting through it. It was my first Fuentes, and may or may not be typical of his earlier style, but it is original, gloriously baroque, and alarmingly dense. Certainly, from the very first paragraph, when a head recently severed from its body begins the long narration of how it got to be that way, I could recognize Fuentes’ sheer originality. And his mastery of words! So much did I enjoy the easy brilliance of Edith Grossman’s translation that I got hold of the first fifteen pages of the book in Spanish for comparison; the original is perhaps more liquid, but Grossman beautifully captures its unpredictable rhythms, its shifts of tone. Fuentes is a Mexican Salman Rushdie, whom one almost reads for the brilliance of his imagery and breadth of erudition alone. Like Rushdie, he is impossible to skim, though I admit there were times in this long book when I was tempted to do so.

The severed head belongs to 27-year-old Josué Nadal. He begins his story in high school where he is befriended by a slightly older boy known only as Jericó (many names in the book have symbolic overtones). Both are effectively orphans: Jericó lives alone, and Josué is cared for by a disapproving housekeeper. The two bond closely, move in together, and set themselves an intellectual program to study all sides of every possible argument, reading Saint Augustine side-by-side with Nietzsche, studying Machiavelli. They also experience less intellectual pursuits, such as sharing the same whore. Brothers in spirit, they are also potential rivals. By entitling the first and last of the book’s four main sections “Castor and Pollux” and “Cain and Abel,” Fuentes appears to show his hand, but the truth is not so obvious.

Jericó goes abroad for college. Josué studies law, and is given repeated access to Mexico City’s most notorious prison (one of several sections that reminded me of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666). Adulthood sees each of them placed in apprenticeships to men of power: Jericó as an aide to Mexican President Carrerra, Josué in the entourage of the country’s most powerful business leader, Max Monroy. The book becomes an examination of power, whether wielded through the ballot box, the street revolution, the reach of the internet, or criminal conspiracy. It is also about heritage: the lingering question of Jericó and Josué’s parenthood, and more importantly the recent history of Mexico that has brought it to its present crisis of lawlessness. “Just yesterday,” one of the characters remarks, “a highway in the state of Guerrero was blocked by uniformed criminals. Were they fake police? Or simply real police dedicated to crime?” Unlike Bolaño, though, Fuentes keeps most of the lawlessness offstage, although he has the same passion for detail of other kinds, mundane detail that can alternate with abstract philosophy in often disconcerting ways, as in this passage that explains the book’s title:

“And what is destination, or destiny?” continued the voice I tried to locate, to recognize, in the row of people’s scribes sitting in front of the old building of the Inquisition. “It isn’t fate. It is simply disguised will. The final desire.” Then I was able to unite voice and eyes. A small man, bald but in a borrowed hairdo, his bones brittle and his hands energetic, white-skinned though tending to a yellowish pallor, for a couple of Band-Aids covered tiny cuts on one cheek and his neck, dressed in an old black suit with gray stripes. […] Borrowed apparel. Second-hand clothes.

Once, towards the end of the book, Josué recounts a long dream. Somewhere in the middle of it, I found that I had lost the mental quotes; I no longer knew whether it was a dream or real. I also realized that it did not matter. So much of this book takes place in a nightmare world — a miasma of philosophy hanging over a swamp of manipulation and desire — that it is no longer relevant to distinguish fact from fiction. Except that Fuentes continues to write with verbal brilliance and flashes of humor that do much to illuminate the darkness.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 6 readers
PUBLISHER: Random House (January 4, 2011)
REVIEWER: Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Carlos Fuentes
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

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]]> HELIOPOLIS by James Scudamore /2010/heliopolis-by-james-scudamore/ Fri, 12 Nov 2010 14:54:21 +0000 /?p=13552 Book Quote:

“Guests would arrive in armoured 4x4s or mud spattered jeeps, tanned men with bellies and moustaches, who chatted by the pool all weekend gripping beers and caipirinhas; stunning wives on sunloungers with tinted hair and manicured nails and cosmetically enhanced bodies, rotating in the heat like rotisserie chickens.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (NOV 12, 2010)

The main character in James Scudamore’s novel Heliópolis is twenty-seven-year-old Ludo. Born in terrible poverty in a Sao Paulo Favela (shantytown), Ludo and his mother had the good fortune to come to the attention of Rebecca, the British, charity-minded wife of one of the city’s richest businessmen, Zeno (Zé) Generoso. Zé and Rebecca, who have one daughter, Melissa, formally adopted Ludo, and he has a privileged upbringing which comes with a price; he’s constantly reminded of his humble beginnings, his good fortune and how much he owes to his benefactors. Separated from his mother who remains as the cook at Zé’s country estate, Ludo has no self-identity. His life is shaped by the desires of the Generoso family, and while he may be the adopted son, he’s little more than a trained house-serf.

The novel explores the vast disparities between the rich and the poor, and just how the characters adapt to their respective roles in this overwhelmingly non-static society. To Zé, it’s simple: “there is no such thing as a middle class, and no such thing as a non-criminal underclass.” It’s “us” (Zé and his fellow plutocrats) vs. the rest of Brazil. Zé and his family live into a fortified compound within the exclusive Angel Park community. Life in Angel Park has a surreal quality, but at the same time the wealthy who sprawl inside these impregnable walls live with incredible paranoia when it comes to the issue of security. Here’s Zé’s mansion:

“The house he flies home to every weeknight is a fortified compound, buffered by terraced ponds and beds of hostile spike shrubs. His self-watering lawns are patrolled by two pure-bred fighting mastiffs, which roll over on demand for Zé and his family, but would take the leg off an uninvited guest. His palm trees contain motion-sensitive cameras connected to the hub of technology in the guardhouse; if you disturbed so much as a blade of his grass, Zé would know about it. And that’s just the beginning. Before you even get to the house you have to enter the compound itself, which is defended by bundles of oiled razor wire and a tooled up crew that resembles a private army rather than a team of security guards. It would take a thief with Special Forces training to get past the outer walls, let alone breach Zé’s last line of defence, and even if you did, you wouldn’t find him—he’d be sealed in his tungsten panic room long before you got in.”

Heliópolis is actually the name of the largest favela in Sao Paulo, but for this novel the term could refer to the lives of the extremely wealthy set–people who never travel at street level, but who instead move from building to building via helicopter:

“Melissa’s father, Zé Fischer Carnicelli, hasn’t been down to street level in the city for over fifteen years. He lives in a gated community of 30,000 inhabitants, way out of town, and is flown there to his downtown office every morning in a helicopter that has the word Predator painted graffiti-style over its nose, along with gnashing teeth and a pair of evil yellow eyes. He’s approaching retirement, but he still keeps regular office hours. A chauffeur drives him between his house and the helicopter, then back again in the evening. During the day, he might hop to another high-rise to meet someone for lunch, or to attend an afternoon meeting, but he never touches the pavement. It’s not just a question of safety; if he went by car he could get snared in a traffic jam lasting hours. Nobody who’s anybody gets driven to work in the city these days.”

When the novel begins, Ludo works in a nebulous “communications” company in Sao Paolo. His repulsive boss, Oscar, a lifelong friend of Zé’s, vacillates when it comes to his attitude to Ludo. On one hand, Ludo seems to enjoy “special treatment” as an employee who is hired through strings pulled, and yet there are moments when Oscar zones in on Ludo and humiliates him in front of a room full of business associates. Ludo typically arrives late to work, and spends large amounts of time snoozing curled around the base of the toilet.

The novel begins with Ludo sleeping with his adoptive sister and sometime mistress, Melissa. She’s now married to Ernesto, the plump well-meaning son of another wealthy Brazilian family. Apart from the money connection, it’s an odd match. Ernesto, who works interminably on an ever-elusive PhD, is obsessed with the plight of Brazil’s underclass, and while he interviews people for his Sisyphean project, his wife Melissa lives like a princess in a tower and spends lavishly at the most exclusive shops.

The novel is divided between the past and the present. A large portion of the book details scenes of Ludo’s childhood as he and his mother jump into action for the Generoso family every weekend. Ludo and his mother live at Zé’s country estate which is a sort of exclusive Disneyland for Zé, his friends and the business associates he invites for the weekend. No expense is spared for these mind-boggling weekends of endless gluttony and pleasure. Ludo’s present focuses on a new advertising campaign geared towards the inhabitants of the favelas. Advertising executives vie to provide the slogan for the new supermarket chain geared for the poorest of Brazil’s inhabitants. These scenes underscore just how out of touch Brazil’s upper echelons are with the rest of the country.

Heliópolis offers fascinating insights into Brazilian life and the vast chasms between the rich and the poor, and Ludo is a bridge figure who straddles both worlds. He’s useful to his masters and yet he doesn’t fit in either world–not the skyscrapers and the country estates or the fetid squalor of the favelas. Ludo fails to connect with anyone on any meaningful level. He even unintentionally manages to patronize the office cleaner, and it’s through this relationship that it becomes clear that Ludo has no place in society.

Heliópolis was longlisted for the 2009 Booker prize. Not that I care–the books I like never win. I liked Heliópolis but it wasn’t perfect. Ultimately there’s something unsatisfying with the tale. Richly evocative when it comes to locations and atmosphere, many of the characters fail to connect as living, breathing human beings, and its denouement feels somewhat contrived.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 4 readers
PUBLISHER: Europa Editions (October 20, 2010)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE: James Scudamore
EXTRAS: Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Also set in Brazil:

Buried Strangers by Leighton Gage

Bibliography:

]]> THE INVISIBLE MOUNTAIN by Carolina de Robertis /2010/the-invisible-mountain-by-carolina-de-robertis/ Sat, 09 Oct 2010 15:06:35 +0000 /?p=12795 Book Quote:

“She told him stories, too, sprawling ones…about a baby girl who disappeared from a home that did not want her, that had not given her a name, and who survived mysteriously until she was discovered, wild, birdlike, alone in the crown of a tree, and soared from there, or fell, depending on whom you asked and when you asked him. She told him about another woman, who, legend had it, met her future husband while she was his patient, in a wheelchair and a dull hospital gown, seducing him with her sheer intensity of spirit…”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (OCT 9, 2010)

The Invisible Mountain is a gem of a novel, grounded in actual history, with a dollop of magical realism, a splash of Dickensian coincidence, with some forbidden romance and political intrigue added to the mix.

The novel opens at the turn of the 20th century in a remote Uruguayan village, when a baby is spirited away and then reappears, a year later, unharmed in the branches of a tree. The young one is named Pajarita – translated to little bird – and the narrative, divided into three sections, sequentially focuses on her, her daughter Eva, and her granddaughter Salome.

All three are strong, impassioned women, who are capable of making bold choices in order to remain authentic and true to themselves. As the century opens up with more options for women, the choices become increasingly bolder. One of the beauties of The Invisible Mountain is that the prose accurately mirrors the country of Uruguay – from a time when gentle magic lit it from within to the near-present, when the country struggled under the harsh light of despotic politics.

Each woman is named fortuitously and fulfills the destiny of her name. Each in turn, embraces passion, poetry, and politics and becomes a vessel into which De Robertis pours decades of Uruguayan and Argentinian culture and family dynamics. The magical lyricism (think: Isabel Allende or Gabriel Garcia Marquez) is replaced with the intense and painful down-to-earth images of a country that has veered from its destiny and imprisoned those with the courage to speak out.

De Robertis writes: “This Uruguay: less innocent, smaller somehow, dwarfed by the looming world, more wounded, bleeding people out through its wounds, mourning the lost blood of the exiled and the dead and also those who simply shrugged and flew away, but also stronger for its wounds, mature, tenacious, wiser about what it can withstand, with a heart that beats and people who pulse through its pathways.” She could be speaking of her characters who also mature with their hearts joyfully beating despite their wounds.

In many ways, this is a love song to Uruguay: “El Rio de la Plata’s curving motion a woman weeping against a balcony rail, the red aroma of beef roasting at las brasas at the corner bar…Montevideo’s sleepy beauties and its daily return into her skin.” In equally powerful ways, it’s a celebration of women, particularly mother-daughter relationships and how they evolve and endure.

If there is a flaw in this novel, it is in the depiction of the male characters. The author was, at one time, a rape crisis counselor; perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that the vast majority of men are depicted as abusive, inebriated, unfaithful, and downright violent. There is one notable exception, but that character’s story is told inorganically; from both an economic and psychological perspective, the character’s decision – and the results stemming from that decision – would be highly unlikely in the real world.

But as I closed the pages, I was left with the feeling that this multi-generational saga is assuredly destined to stand among the finest debut works, with a tone that is often elegiac and a theme that is truly of the ages.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 40 readers
PUBLISHER: Vintage; 1 Reprint edition (August 10, 2010)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Carolina de Robertis
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Classic Latin American Magical Realism:

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo

Bibliography:

]]> THE ISLAND BENEATH THE SEA by Isabel Allende /2010/the-island-beneath-the-sea-by-isabel-allende/ Fri, 13 Aug 2010 22:53:48 +0000 /?p=11176 Book Quote:

“In the jungle, beneath the thick dome of trees, it grew dark early, and the dawn light came late through the dense fog tangled in the ferns. The day was growing short for Valmorain, who was in a hurry, but eternal for the rest. The only food for the slaves was dried meat with a maize or sweet potato soup and a cup of coffee, handed out at night after they camped. The master had ordered a cube of sugar and a jot of taffia – the cane liquor of the poor – to be added to the coffee to warm those who were sleeping piled together on the ground and soaked with rain and dew, exposed to the devastation of an attack of fever. That year epidemics had been calamitous on the plantation; they’d had to replace many slaves, and none of the newborn had survived. Cambray warned his employer that the liquor and sugar would corrupt the slaves, and later there would be no way to keep them from sucking the cane. There was a special punishment for that infraction, but Valmorain was not given to complicated torture, except for runaways, in which case he followed the Code Noir to the letter. The execution of Maroons in Le Cap seemed to him a waste of time and money; it would have been enough to hang them without all the fuss.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett (AUG 13, 2010)

The mulatto slave Zarité, known as Tété, and her owner, the French planter Toulouse Valmorain form the center of Allende’s novel  about slavery and the slave revolt that freed Haiti.

Valmorain came to the island at the age of 20, a rich noble anxious for a quick return to Paris. But the death of his father and the disarray of his sugar plantation make escape impossible, so Valmorain throws himself into making the property a success. His right hand man in this is the brutal overseer Prosper Cambray, feared by all.

Cambray lusts after Tété, Valmorain’s wife’s maid and soon, as the wife descends more deeply into madness, Valmorain’s mistress and primary caretaker of his son. Tété’s own son with Valmorain has been taken from her, she knows not where, and her lover, a young, proud African, runs off to join the rebels.

The first half centers on the brief, degraded lives of slaves on the island and the build-up to the slave revolt. Allende fills in a lot of political and emotional detail: the French Revolution so far away, the failed slave revolts of the past, the fears of the vastly outnumbered whites.

The second half takes Tété and Valmorain to Cuba, then New Orleans, as they flee Toussaint L’Ouverture’s rebellion. Allende’s historical focus is masterful, from the economic and intellectual views on slavery and slaves by landowners, to the remnants of African culture – like voodoo – that the slaves clung to.

The brutality is mindboggling, of course, and Allende goes into it in great detail. It’s detail, actually, which makes this less than her best. So determined is she to get across the despicable history of slavery, she loses the individuals among the archetypes. She depicts Valmorain as a fairly liberal planter, although he rapes Tété at age 11 and considers her incapable of deep emotion. He is simply a man of his times and culture.

Tété is more complex, but still rather flat. The real life of the novel is slavery itself – the enormity of it as a force for evil. Allende successfully shows how slavery corrupted the thinking of whites and debased their values, how it changed the course of history in so many ways, seeped into the very fabric of the culture and how its legacy follows us still.

Allende’s research is formidable and her passion infectious. Anyone interested in the birth of Haiti or the coming-of-age of New Orleans should enjoy Allende’s thorough exploration.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 60 readers
PUBLISHER: Harper; 1 edition (April 27, 2010)
REVIEWER: Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Isabel Allende
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Other:

Young Adult:

Related Books:

E-Book Study Guide:

Movies from books:

]]> THE ACCIDENTAL SANTERA by Irete Lazo /2010/the-accidental-santera-by-irete-lazo/ Sun, 30 May 2010 03:09:06 +0000 /?p=9695 Book Quote:

“No. Not that work. Soul work,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “Spirit is glad you are here. This is a start,” he said tapping the table. “You need to look to family for the answers you really want. There is an old woman, she is surrounded by many children,” he said.

An image of Grandma Segovia, seated and surrounded by children flashed through my mind. The children were reaching for her, hands outstretched. My grandmother looked tired, I saw it in her eyes. She looked at me as if asking for my help. She seemed sad. The sense that I knew how she felt startled me. I wondered where it had come from and what kind of help I could possibly give her.

Book Review:

Review by Katherine Petersen (MAY 29, 2010)

Nothing has gone right for Gabrielle Segovia in a while. Frustrated with her academic job, slowly becoming more and more estranged from her husband and despondent after three miscarriages, everything comes to a head when after too much alcohol at a New Orleans nightclub, she picks up a sexy scientist attending the same conference and might have done more than kiss him if her stomach hadn’t propelled her to the bathroom instead. On a lark, she participates in a reading at Marie Laveau’s shop that will change her life. Mr. John, the reader, tells her that her husband has a surprise for her, her father should stay away from ladders, someone at her university wants to steal her work and that she needs to turn to her family for answers.

Skeptical to the core, she’s a scientist after all, Gabi is startled into the beginnings of belief more than anything else. Her husband, Benito, has cut his hair and her father fell from a ladder and hurt his head. So, Gabi makes the call to her Latina family in Miami that will set her on a course of exploring the religion called Santeria and on a journey of self-discovery as well.

Santeria has roots in both Africa and Cuba. Many West African slaves developed the religion, giving names of their gods and goddesses, called orishas, to the Catholic saints to whom they were allowed to pray. Lazo gives a good introduction to the basics of the religion in her novel, and those with an interest in beliefs and religions will find it fascinating and search for the titles in her bibliography to further their research.

Gabrielle has spent her whole life trying to be normal. Raised in Texas, she learned Spanish in high school, not from family, and her best friend, Patricia, teases her about revoking her Latina club card. Her insecurities at first make her scared of believing but also terrified that someone might find out. She’s afraid people will think of her differently, when in reality, the question is how she thinks of herself. I found myself frustrated with her insecurities a bit but had to remind myself that, unlike this reader for most things, some people care what others think about their beliefs or actions. Many people face similar feelings, albeit in different situations, and will relate to and empathize with Gabi’s fear of trying something new, taking a risk. For Gabrielle, her desperation to have a child, which her family believes the religion will help, gives her the impetus to move forward.

Lazo does a nice job of showing us Gabi’s feelings and teaching valuable information while still moving the story forward. It’s a story about the strength of friendship, love, belief and commitment. Lazo uses a lot of Spanish, although it’s translated afterwards which distracted me a little, and I found it easier to read dialogue when it was explained before the people spoke in Spanish. Lazo includes a strong supporting cast especially with Patricia, her Aunt Mayte and niece, Bella. Overall, it’s an enjoyable read in which we root for the main character and learn the basics of Santeria as well.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 15 readers
PUBLISHER: Thomas Dunne Books; First Edition edition (October 14, 2008)
REVIEWER: Katherine Petersen
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Irete Lazo
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More Santeria in fiction:

The Sugar Cage by Connie May Fowler

The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson

Bibliography:

]]> TRY TO REMEMBER by Iris Gomez /2010/try-to-remember-by-iris-gomez/ Sat, 22 May 2010 03:16:59 +0000 /?p=9464 Book Quote:

“It was awful, Fatima, like he was possessed or something. See, he has these delusions, on top of the temper. He thinks we’re gonna get millions of dollars from the government, and that everyone’s trying to keep him from collecting the money. And I’m all alborotada all the time fearing that he’s going to get arrested and lose his green card and we’ll all end up in some sad life in Colombia with no way back!”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (MAY 21, 2010)

As Try to Remember begins in 1968, Gabriella is fifteen years old, living with her father, mother and two younger brothers near Miami, Florida. They have come to the United States from Colombia and though her parents both hold green cards, Gabi is afraid that they will all have their cards confiscated and be sent back to their village in Colombia. Gabi’s fears stem mostly from the fact that her father behaves erratically and her brothers get into trouble in school.

They have a large extended family that helps them out. Gabi’s mother does piecework and part-time janitorial work. Gabi’s father harbors delusions that the government owes him millions of dollars. He is unable to hold down a job and he spends his days writing letters to government officials asking for his back pay. Somehow, he has confused the money he earned as an oil rig worker in Colombia with money he thinks he’s earned in the U.S. Gabi is the transcriber of these letters which are incomprehensible and delusional in quality.

It is obvious to Gabi that her father is very ill. The family, however, and especially Gabi’s mother, refuse to believe the extent of his illness. They refer to what is going on with him as “nerves.” Sometimes Gabi’s father rants and beats up Gabi’s brothers. They, in turn, are acting out by glue sniffing, oppositional behaviors and cutting school. Gabi appears to be the only mature one in the family. She tries to break through her mother’s denial about her father, but can not succeed.

After Gabi’s father severely beats up one of her brothers, her mother gets some dalmane (a sleeping pill) from a relative and starts grinding these pills into her husband’s morning orange juice. It seems to calm him down.

Gabi is coming of age in all this chaos. She is trying to individuate, make friends, understand the rituals of dating and daring to think what she might do with her life. It is the 1960’s, a time of experimentation, the beginning of feminism and the time when she is growing up. Her family expects her to finish high school and live at home afterwords. Should she have aspirations of attending college, she must commute.

Gabi meets people who hold different ideas than her family and they open her eyes to alternative possibilities. She thinks about leaving home for college, wishes that she had more time to spend outside the house and, mostly, wishes that her family was not so crazy.

I enjoyed reading about Gabi and her life. I empathized with her difficult life as a parental child and the only mature person in her family. However, I was somewhat disappointed with the way this book dealt with the serious and chronic mental illness of Gabi’s father. Dealing with serious and chronic mental illness is always difficult for families. At best, there are resources, support systems and medical assistance. Gabi’s family is poor, her mother in denial and they don’t know where to start. Additionally, there are cross-cultural differences to mental illness. In Latino families, a man’s role is very important. To undermine his role, by suggesting there is something wrong with him, is a very difficult action to take. It felt like Gabi’s mother’s denial was too strong, her resistance beyond reasonable. However, the book was more about Gabi’s experience of her family than what her family actually did or did not do.

This is a debut novel by a recognized poet who currently works as an immigration attorney. The author was born in Cartagena, Colombia and grew up in Miami, Florida. The addendum to the book states that this novel “draws on her personal experiences growing up as a Latina in Miami.”

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 15 readers
PUBLISHER: Grand Central Publishing; 1 edition (May 5, 2010)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Iris Gomez
EXTRAS: Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Another coming of age story:

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by  Junot Diaz

Bibliography:

Poetry:

]]> THE LACUNA by Barbara Kingsolver /2009/the-lacuna-by-barbara-kingsolver/ Fri, 11 Dec 2009 02:39:08 +0000 /?p=6758 Book Quote:

“Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett (DEC 10, 2009)

Harrison Shepherd’s odyssey through three tumultuous decades of the 20th century begins in a lonely boyhood between two worlds – America and Mexico. It continues through the Depression and World War II, and culminates in the ugly, surreal hysteria of the Red Scare.

Along the way Shepherd mixes plaster for the great Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, becomes a confidant of his colorful wife, the artist Frida Kahlo, serves as secretary to the exiled Bolshevik, Leon Trotsky, and becomes a celebrity in his own right. Readers will bond with his kind soul, his boundless curiosity, his youthful exuberance and his self-deprecating wit as he experiences the best and worst his times have to offer.

An ambitious, tightly organized novel, Kingsolver’s latest is mostly assembled from journals Shepherd began keeping as a boy – journals in which the pronoun “I” is seldom used. Archivist’s notes, letters to and from friends and enemies, newspaper articles (both real and fictional), and even congressional testimony offer added perspectives.

Uprooted from his suburban Virginia home at age 12 in 1929 and transplanted to an isolated island hacienda in his mother’s native Mexico, Shepherd pretty much brings himself up, making himself useful in the kitchen and spending hours learning to navigate a mysterious underwater cave (the first lacuna). With his feckless mother flitting (downhill) from lover to lover, Harrison’s schooling is sparse, but his reading is prodigious.

When his mother takes up with a man from Mexico City, Shepherd avoids a Catholic school for hopeless cases by putting his bread-making skills to work mixing plaster for Diego Rivera. Eventually his American father is induced to take him back – but only to put him in a Washington boarding school.

Ostracized by the other students, he takes up with an older boy whose formal education has been interrupted by the Depression, but whose knowledge of the world is as fascinating as it is mystifying. Most of this tortuous interlude is expunged (the relevant journal destroyed in 1947), and the reader will surmise that Shepherd’s budding homosexuality has something to do with that.

Returning to Mexico, he joins the Rivera-Kahlo household as a domestic and is treated as a servant or a member of the family as it suits them. Ardent communists, the flamboyant artists are all for workers’ rights – as long as it doesn’t impinge on the smooth workings of their household.

Trotsky takes refuge with them and Shepherd takes to him immediately – a kindly, fatherly, unflappable figure – pursuing his cause despite Stalin’s death threats and rabid persecution by the press. After Trotsky’s assassination, Shepherd flees Mexico for the U.S., the household in upheaval and under suspicion.

Settling in Asheville, N.C., Shepherd, not yet 30, becomes an agoraphobic recluse, his sexuality carefully closeted, his exuberance taking flight in his writing. His first novel – a swashbuckling tale of Aztec downfall – is an immediate bestseller. He struggles to reconcile his horror of the limelight with his joy in success.

As fame begins to get out of hand, he hires a sympathetic widow, Violet Brown, who becomes his amanuensis and eventually his archivist. A countrywoman with a practical turn of mind, Brown nudges him into the world and discovers a wider world for herself.

Her loyalty and the hysteria of the anti-communist tidal wave drive the last section of the book, while Shepherd guards himself with dry wit and naivety, his privacy battered by rumor, half-truths and lies.

The lacuna – a gap in the whole – directs the flow of this vivid, atmospheric story. From the start Shepherd shapes himself by what’s missing. An absent father and flighty mother make him resourceful. He notes the strangeness of the world around him, makes friends with people unlike himself. He attaches himself by being helpful and acquires skills that come in useful throughout his life.

Sources outside the journal fill in some of the things he leaves out – from book reviews to hints at his sexual life – as well as pointing out the sometimes yawning abyss between truth and perception.

The book is as demanding as it is captivating. The form sometimes leaves a distance (yes, a gap) between the reader and the protagonist, which can be exasperating. And Kingsolver’s left-leaning politics are almost shrill in their insistence on outrage.

These are small quibbles, however, and Kingsolver’s mastery of the partnership between big themes and personal engagement should please her fans and win new ones.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 620 readers
PUBLISHER: Harper (November 3, 2009)
REVIEWER: Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Barbara Kingsolver
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our reviews of:

And if you like this novel, you may also like:

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