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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ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE

by Gail Honeyman ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 9, 2017

Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.

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A very funny novel about the survivor of a childhood trauma.

At 29, Eleanor Oliphant has built an utterly solitary life that almost works. During the week, she toils in an office—don’t inquire further; in almost eight years no one has—and from Friday to Monday she makes the time go by with pizza and booze. Enlivening this spare existence is a constant inner monologue that is cranky, hilarious, deadpan, and irresistible. Eleanor Oliphant has something to say about everything. Riding the train, she comments on the automated announcements: “I wondered at whom these pearls of wisdom were aimed; some passing extraterrestrial, perhaps, or a yak herder from Ulan Bator who had trekked across the steppes, sailed the North Sea, and found himself on the Glasgow-Edinburgh service with literally no prior experience of mechanized transport to call upon.” Eleanor herself might as well be from Ulan Bator—she’s never had a manicure or a haircut, worn high heels, had anyone visit her apartment, or even had a friend. After a mysterious event in her childhood that left half her face badly scarred, she was raised in foster care, spent her college years in an abusive relationship, and is now, as the title states, perfectly fine. Her extreme social awkwardness has made her the butt of nasty jokes among her colleagues, which don’t seem to bother her much, though one notices she is stockpiling painkillers and becoming increasingly obsessed with an unrealistic crush on a local musician. Eleanor’s life begins to change when Raymond, a goofy guy from the IT department, takes her for a potential friend, not a freak of nature. As if he were luring a feral animal from its hiding place with a bit of cheese, he gradually brings Eleanor out of her shell. Then it turns out that shell was serving a purpose.

Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.

Pub Date: May 9, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-7352-2068-3

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking

Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK TO SCREEN
‘Eleanor Oliphant’ Film Adaptation in the Works

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THE PEARL

by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 24, 1947

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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.