A creative, evocative mix of stories.
A debut collection of short fiction, mostly in Spanish, addressing aspects of the Mexican and Mexican-American experiences.
Author De La Cruz shares more than two dozen short, Spanish-language narratives, some just a paragraph long and others spanning several pages. The book opens with “Conitos de nieve,” a disturbing account of two hunting aficionados showing off their trophies. Explorations of the dark side of human behavior follow, including a vivid depiction of a disliked old woman. But the author’s outlook isn’t entirely bleak; there’s a touch of playfulness in “Guiño,” in which deities from around the world socialize together, and “El rosario” presents a thoughtful portrait of two policemen attending a funeral. The stories return to the theme of chameleons introduced in the title, using the animals as a metaphor for finding homes in different cultures and different places. The book’s shortest pieces evoke Eduardo Galeano’s microfiction, with the same attention to language and confidence in the reader’s ability to interpret metaphorical statements such as “Mi último sueño fue curioso: había hielo y un cameleón se volvió transparente queriéndose perder” (“My last dream was curious: there was ice and a chameleon turned itself transparent trying to blend in”). One item in the collection is presented in English: “Maricopa,” a prose poem that asks, “Why wasn’t he blessed with citizenship? / Why wasn’t he born up north? / Why not golden hair?” The characters in these stories are quiet, but each plays a role in conveying the book’s symbolism and its themes of alienation and adaptation. In these tales of false identities, transgressive behavior, determination, and moments of grace, De La Cruz has produced an incisive depiction of the transnational and transcultural experience of border life in engaging, highly readable language.
A creative, evocative mix of stories.Pub Date: May 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9890623-4-3
Page Count: 74
Publisher: Revista Arenas Blancas
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
This is the sort of book that stirs one so deeply that it is almost impossible to attempt to convey the impression it leaves. It is the story of today's Exodus, of America's great trek, as the hordes of dispossessed tenant farmers from the dust bowl turn their hopes to the promised land of California's fertile valleys. The story of one family, with the "hangers-on" that the great heart of extreme poverty sometimes collects, but in that story is symbolized the saga of a movement in which society is before the bar. What an indictment of a system — what an indictment of want and poverty in the land of plenty! There is flash after flash of unforgettable pictures, sharply etched with that restraint and power of pen that singles Steinbeck out from all his contemporaries. There is anger here, but it is a deep and disciplined passion, of a man who speaks out of the mind and heart of his knowledge of a people. One feels in reading that so they must think and feel and speak and live. It is an unresolved picture, a record of history still in the making. Not a book for casual reading. Not a book for unregenerate conservative. But a book for everyone whose social conscience is astir — or who is willing to face facts about a segment of American life which is and which must be recognized. Steinbeck is coming into his own. A new and full length novel from his pen is news. Publishers backing with advertising, promotion aids, posters, etc. Sure to be one of the big books of the Spring. First edition limited to half of advance as of March 1st. One half of dealer's orders to be filled with firsts.
Pub Date: April 14, 1939
ISBN: 0143039431
Page Count: 532
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1939
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