A typical debut, rife with self-reference and autobiography, that adds another voice, but nothing new, to the rich tapestry of gay life in America. In this slim collection of nine short stories and ten poems, Cuadros explores what it means to be young, gay, and Latino in California in the 1990s—growing up, coming out, dealing with the pressures of the Catholic faith and the expectations of a strict family, losing friends and lovers, and living with AIDS. Some of the best stories are those in which the issue of sexuality sort of takes a back seat: A young boy copes with his great-grandfather's death and the family rivalry that rears its ugly head at the funeral in ``Indulgences''; a man cares for his dying grandmother and discovers family secrets as he sifts through his grandfather's old journal and his own childhood memories of a friendly ghost in ``Reynaldo.'' But even here, the sexual subtext is strong—these rivalries and secrets are generated by suggestions of homosexuality. Still, Cuadros prefers to attack the subject of gay culture head-on: A suicidal nine-year-old fools around with his ``half retarded'' cousin in ``Chivalry''; a man with AIDS has unsafe sex while struggling with the opposing ideas ``This is wrong'' and ``Shut up, you're going to die anyway'' in ``Unprotected''; and another dying man discovers a new way of seeing when AIDS steals his eyesight in ``Sight.'' But what Cuadros hopes to be enlightening and despairing feels merely commonplace and dull. This proves even more true in the tragic but uninspired poetry that addresses everything from a first encounter (``To the First Time'') to testing positive (``At Risk'') to watching a lover die (``The Quilt Series''). What should have been a moving testament to relationships and life in a time of crisis proves agenda-driven and weak.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-87286-295-X
Page Count: 160
Publisher: City Lights
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
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
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
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.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
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