A nuanced, vibrant look at the American experience through Mexican-American eyes.
Pride and tragedy unfold in this tale of Mexican Americans navigating the artificial border that splits their ancestral homeland.
In the latest from Castillo (Watercolor Women, Opaque Men, 2005, etc.), a handful of Mexican Americans in a small town outside El Paso, Texas, tell of their search to find Rafa, an illegal immigrant who constantly returns to Mexico, despite the dangers he faces at each crossing. Regina, Rafa's sister, has U.S. residency and a stable job as a teacher's aide, thanks to her unconsummated marriage to a Vietnam conscript who never made it back. Gabo, Rafa's 15-year-old son who lives with Regina, writes letters to the saint Padre Pió about the pain of losing his mother, murdered during a border crossing; his fears for his father; and the challenges of daily life shoulder-to-shoulder with gang members and police. American-born Miguel Betancourt, a teacher in Regina's school, is politically astute and passionate about the injustices his people have endured for centuries. Together with Abuelo Milton (Miguel's blind but still dapper grandfather), Miguel, Regina and Gabo face down the “coyotes” who prey on border crossers and who may know of Rafa's whereabouts. Regina, a down-to-earth, hardworking woman in her 50s who struggles to come to grips with her past, is elevated to an object of adoration by these three men—Gabo appreciates her selflessness, Abuelo Milton her beauty and Miguel the fact that she is one of those women “who not only look good but probably rustles steer in their spare time.” When tragedy strikes, Regina proves that her heart is big enough to be worthy of their love. Castillo personalizes her characters by allowing them to speak in their own voice, from the heart, and the frequent sprinkling of Spanish words throughout the text underscores the cultural divide between Mexican and Anglo culture.
A nuanced, vibrant look at the American experience through Mexican-American eyes.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6500-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2007
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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