I feel incredibly robbed not to have found this book when I was mid-adolescence, when I would have reveled in empathy with Esperanza, the beautiful, awkward, sad, scared, bold, shy, lonely, social narrator who is coming-of-age through the course of the year during which The House on Mango Street takes place. Cisneros writes this book as an extended series of short vignettes: portraits of people, places, and things in Esperanza’s life; all the things that make up the tapestry of her youth. With these vignettes, […]
He’d spent time rehearsing this serene pose
This was a kind of a placeholder for me. I’m not allowing myself to reread American Gods again, because I reread it less than a year ago, and I love it too much, and the TV series is coming, and it’s my favorite kind of book, so I had to find a proxy, and this looked super interesting. And it was good, but not amazing (nothing is American Gods, goddamnit!). I think the hardest for me was that Ike is no hero, antihero, complicated scamp, […]
An immigrant family beset with secrets
A sensitively written portrayal of a Chinese American family with many secrets and a serious failure to communicate. Ling Tang has been widowed for nearly a year, but can’t get past the pain of a brittle marriage and two adult children who can’t communicate with her, each other, or their significant others. The story is told from the varying perspectives of Ling and her children Emily and Michael, and the rawness of their damaged lives is tangible and sometimes hard to take, but she offers […]
Sweet but boring immigrant’s tale
This simple little novel, frankly, left me cold. A slow pace, pedestrian language and dialogue, an uninspired plot and a “surprise” ending which goes nowhere, left me rather stunned that this book was twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Brooklyn is the story of Eilis Lacey, a young Irish woman in the post-war years who lives with her country mom and smart ambitious older sister Rose. Three brothers have left home to work in Dublin. Dad died years earlier. As little to no work is […]