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
A presold prefab blockbuster, what with King's Carrie hitting the moviehouses, Salem's Lot being lensed, The Shining itself sold to Warner Bros. and tapped as a Literary Guild full selection, NAL paperback, etc. (enough activity to demand an afterlife to consummate it all).
The setting is The Overlook, a palatial resort on a Colorado mountain top, snowbound and closed down for the long, long winter. Jack Torrance, a booze-fighting English teacher with a history of violence, is hired as caretaker and, hoping to finish a five-act tragedy he's writing, brings his wife Wendy and small son Danny to the howling loneliness of the half-alive and mad palazzo. The Overlook has a gruesome past, scenes from which start popping into the present in various suites and the ballroom. At first only Danny, gifted with second sight (he's a "shiner"), can see them; then the whole family is being zapped by satanic forces. The reader needs no supersight to glimpse where the story's going as King's formula builds to a hotel reeling with horrors during Poesque New Year's Eve revelry and confetti outta nowhere....
Back-prickling indeed despite the reader's unwillingness at being mercilessly manipulated.
Pub Date: Jan. 28, 1976
ISBN: 0385121679
Page Count: 453
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1976
PERSPECTIVES
Steinbeck's peculiarly intense simplicity of technique is admirably displayed in this vignette — a simple, tragic tale of Mexican little people, a story retold by the pearl divers of a fishing hamlet until it has the quality of folk legend. A young couple content with the humble living allowed them by the syndicate which controls the sale of the mediocre pearls ordinarily found, find their happiness shattered when their baby boy is stung by a scorpion. They dare brave the terrors of a foreign doctor, only to be turned away when all they can offer in payment is spurned. Then comes the miracle. Kino find a great pearl. The future looks bright again. The baby is responding to the treatment his mother had given. But with the pearl, evil enters the hearts of men:- ambition beyond his station emboldens Kino to turn down the price offered by the dealers- he determines to go to the capital for a better market; the doctor, hearing of the pearl, plants the seed of doubt and superstition, endangering the child's life, so that he may get his rake-off; the neighbors and the strangers turn against Kino, burn his hut, ransack his premises, attack him in the dark — and when he kills, in defense, trail him to the mountain hiding place- and kill the child. Then- and then only- does he concede defeat. In sorrow and humility, he returns with his Juana to the ways of his people; the pearl is thrown into the sea.... A parable, this, with no attempt to add to its simple pattern.
Pub Date: Nov. 24, 1947
ISBN: 0140187383
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1947
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