Sharply realized fiction located in a vibrant community.
A novella and seven stories that shine a light—sometimes harsh and glaring—on love and family relationships in the Hispanic community of El Paso.
The title gives its name to the novella and introduces us to the kinds of complexity that will shape all the pieces in the collection. Moníca Montoya, the narrator, finds herself pregnant, but not with her husband Sal’s child. The father, ironically, is a man named Regie, whose son has been bullying Moníca and Sal’s son, Gabe. Moníca goes to Ana Jurado, an herb specialist whose tea is supposed to create a “natural” abortion, but she remains skeptical that the brew will work. And if this isn’t enough on her plate, she’s also dealing with what to do with the ashes of her father, Vicente, a seductive wastrel who somehow balanced having two families, one in Mexico and one in El Paso. Moníca uses her half sister, Bernie Gomez, as a confidante during these personal trials, which include Moníca’s continued sexual involvement with Regie as well as with a younger man. And then Sal is suspended from work for sexual harassment—or for what he terms “flirting.” Although all the plot elements border on soap opera—or perhaps telenovela—Granados has an ear for crisp dialogue and particularly for engaging opening sentences (“There is no way to look sexy carrying a fifty-quart pot of tamales” or “Every time Jim Burkett caressed Anita Guerra’s arm she had to suppress her desire to flinch”). And while the stories can be dark, the characters remain fundamentally defiant and hopeful despite distressing odds.
Sharply realized fiction located in a vibrant community.Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8263-5792-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Univ. of New Mexico
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
© Copyright 2024 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.
