Malls, teenage pregnancy, casual sex, film studies: all related to the troubled equation between sex and love, which Erian...
Some of the nine stories in this debut collection have appeared in literary magazines, and they have the some of the subjects common in such venues: gender issues, bad girl sexuality, weird families, slacker students. But Erian fails to distinguish herself stylistically, offering instead slight fictions that can seem downright generic.
At her best, Erian discovers the brutality of love not just in sexual relations but in the twisted things family members do to one another. The fine, uncharacteristic "Still Life With Plaster" is told from a young girl's point of view; she and her brother live with their grandparents while their divorced mother goes to school, and the old folks, while seemingly mean and cantankerous, are really quite loving and affectionate in their own unsophisticated way. The grown-up brother and sister in "When Animals Attack" are more explicitly brutal: they hate their mother so intensely that when she sends a young runaway to seek their help, they badger him and encourage him to run away again. Most of Erian's pieces involve young women trying to figure out sex and the politics of desire: the older, promiscuous college student in "Standing Up to the Superpowers" uses her sexuality to tease professors into good grades—but fails anyway; the chubby 13-year-old in "Alcatraz" imagines that the popular boy across the street really loves her because she has sex with him almost daily, even though he won't look at her in school; and the promiscuous American exchange student in "Lass" marries the son of a famous Irish novelist, then develops a dangerous attraction with the father. In the title story, a ne'er-do-well couple work in a movie theater, and the woman fears that she has breast cancer.
Malls, teenage pregnancy, casual sex, film studies: all related to the troubled equation between sex and love, which Erian explores with a rookie's talents. Competent but not yet anything special.Pub Date: April 13, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-50478-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
Told through the points of view of the four Garcia sisters- Carla, Sandi, Yolanda and Sofia-this perceptive first novel by poet Alvarez tells of a wealthy family exiled from the Dominican Republic after a failed coup, and how the daughters come of age, weathering the cultural and class transitions from privileged Dominicans to New York Hispanic immigrants. Brought up under strict social mores, the move to the States provides the girls a welcome escape from the pampered, overbearingly protective society in which they were raised, although subjecting them to other types of discrimination. Each rises to the challenge in her own way, as do their parents, Mami (Laura) and Papi (Carlos). The novel unfolds back through time, a complete picture accruing gradually as a series of stories recounts various incidents, beginning with ``Antojos'' (roughly translated ``cravings''), about Yolanda's return to the island after an absence of five years. Against the advice of her relatives, who fear for the safety of a young woman traveling the countryside alone, Yolanda heads out in a borrowed car in pursuit of some guavas and returns with a renewed understanding of stringent class differences. ``The Kiss,'' one of Sofia's stories, tells how she, married against her father's wishes, tries to keep family ties open by visiting yearly on her father's birthday with her young son. And in ``Trespass,'' Carla finds herself the victim of ignorance and prejudice a year after the Garcias have arrived in America, culminating with a pervert trying to lure her into his car. In perhaps one of the most deft and magical stories, ``Still Lives,'' young Sandi has an extraordinary first art lesson and becomes the inspiration for a statue of the Virgin: ``Dona Charito took the lot of us native children in hand Saturday mornings nine to twelve to put Art into us like Jesus into the heathen.'' The tradition and safety of the Old World are just part of the tradeoff that comes with the freedom and choice in the New. Alvarez manages to bring to attention many of the issues-serious and light-that immigrant families face, portraying them with sensitivity and, at times, an enjoyable, mischievous sense.
Pub Date: May 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-945575-57-2
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1991
PROFILES
APPRECIATIONS
A treasured staff writer for The New Yorker from 1949 to the mid-70s, Brennan, who died in 1993, receives fresh, well-earned attention in a collection of her 21 Irish stories, all previously published either in Christmas Eve (1974) or In and Out of Never- Never Land (1969,) together with a frank introduction from her editor William Maxwell. The stories appear in three groups, the first autobiographical, and the second and third concerning two separate families, each of whose quietly desperate circumstances is detailed in a series of overlapping vignettes. For Rose and Hubert Derdon, the state of things surfaces in ``A Young Girl Can Spoil Her Chances'' when Rose, as always, goes to a Mass commemorating her father's death, now 43 years ago, leaving Hubert, as always resentful at the upset of his morning routine. Later, he wants to make amends, and remembers a blue hyacinth he'd given her years before and how happy she'd been to receive it. The truce established between them when he asks her about it, however, collapses as his habitual criticism of her resumes. In the third group, the Bagots—Delia, Martin, and their two young daughters- -fare only marginally better: Martin sleeps in a separate room and has only minimal communication with his family; Delia keeps an immaculate home but hardly ever leaves it. The loss of their firstborn son three days after his birth was a shock they never recovered from. In the extraordinary title piece, Delia and Martin's wedding is remembered after their deaths by his twin sister, spinster Min, who took their furniture and his wedding ring to her flat the better to indulge her satisfaction at having survived Martin, whom she feels betrayed his family to marry. With an understatement often approaching brilliance, the suppressed emotions and diminished lives echoing here make clear that this voice of the last generation deserves to be heard anew.
Pub Date: Nov. 12, 1997
ISBN: 0-395-87046-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
