MAMBO PELIGROSO

Name: MAMBO PELIGROSO
Author: Patricia Chao
ISBN: 0-06-073417-5

by Patricia Chao ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 10, 2005

Still, an entertaining, sometimes intoxicating read. Like the passionate dancers she portrays, Chao writes with heart and...

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Chao’s double-faceted second novel (after Monkey King, 1997) combines the ethnic flavor of sweaty downtown New York dance clubs with a Miami-based plot against Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

The result is a high-energy, sometimes dizzying ride, served with blaring mambo music, plenty of rough-edged sex and characters who, though naggingly familiar, somehow manage to avoid cliché. Catalina Midori, as shy as her Cuban-Japanese roots suggest, is running from a loveless marriage and a past haunted by the childhood memory of finding her father’s body when he committed suicide in Castro’s Cuba 25 years earlier. Now an English teacher living alone in New York, she finds salvation when she discovers the world of Latin dance and the underground clubs where mambo dance kings and queens unwind nightly to pulsating conga beats. Among the rulers of this netherworld are Tuerto, the overbearing machismo dance instructor who often takes more than he gives from his students, and Wendy Cardoza, the hot-blooded ex-junkie turned mambo queen, who fights to remain Tuerto’s number one dance-and-sex partner. Catalina is soon Wendy’s number one friend—and rival, for Catalina is torn between her unquenchable thirst for Tuerto’s passion and her childhood love for her cousin Guillermo, who’s been drawn into a dangerous anti-Castro plot by his wealthy Miami in-laws. When Guillermo is ordered to sneak arms into Cuba for an assassination attempt on Castro timed to coincide with a papal visit, Catalina and Wendy become unknowing accomplices. Chao does a good job of drawing us into this up-tempo world of Latin dance, though her prose isn’t evocative enough to keep the repetitious spins and flourishes from often blending into a blur. And the melodrama that forms the narrative’s final third feels tacked on and less than convincing, despite the alluring doses of Cuban street flavor that go with it.

Still, an entertaining, sometimes intoxicating read. Like the passionate dancers she portrays, Chao writes with heart and soul. Somehow, that feels like enough.

Pub Date: May 10, 2005

ISBN: 0-06-073417-5

Page Count: 320

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2005

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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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.