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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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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.

Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Pub Date: March 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-345-46752-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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by Kristin Hannah

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.