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CHANGO’S FIRE

Name: CHANGO’S FIRE
Author: Ernesto Quinonez
ISBN: 0-06-056459-8

by Ernesto Quinonez ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2004

Chango’s Fire is, therefore, a rough patch in the road. Still, Quiñonez appears to be on his way to artistic maturity.

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Making do and getting by in present-day Spanish Harlem.

Quiñonez’s second, after his well-received debut, Bodega Dreams (2000), follows narrator Julio Santana, a high-school dropout nearing 30 who supports himself and his parents by working on a demolition crew while also attending night school—and freelancing as an arsonist who torches buildings as part of an insurance scam. Julio’s smart, reflective voice is one of the chief pleasures here, as evidenced by its arresting first sentence: “The house I’m about to set on fire stands alone on a hill.” Quiñonez gradually introduces other characters who define and complicate Julio’s relationship to his down-and-out world. He genuinely loves and respects his devout mother and layabout father (a former salsa musician softened by “hard living”). He watches over his “retard” buddy Trompo Loco, who believes he’s the illegitimate son of Julio’s firebug boss Eddie Naglioni. And he’s more chaotically involved with his childhood friend and enemy, belligerent socialist-social activist Maritza; self-styled Santeria priest “Papelito”; and a white woman named Helen, whose artistic preoccupations and liberal guilt simultaneously attract and repel him. There are echoes of James Baldwin’s Another Country in this bumpy story’s blend of ethnic identities and sexual persuasions. But it’s redundant, and its vise-grip plot—in which a misjudgment Julio makes during a “burning” puts him under Eddie’s thumb—isn’t wholly credible. What’s best about Chango’s Fire (whose title alludes to the Santeria “life force”) are Quiñonez’s ingeniously detailed revelations of how people cheat and improvise, to survive in an impoverished and dangerous racist environment. This is an author who knows his material. But next time out he needs to embody it in situations and characters more believable and compelling.

Chango’s Fire is, therefore, a rough patch in the road. Still, Quiñonez appears to be on his way to artistic maturity.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-06-056459-8

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Rayo/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.

The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.