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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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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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.