The del Pino family continues their machinations but without the same vibrancy.
A sequel of sorts to the author’s acclaimed first novel.
In the follow-up to her beloved Dreaming in Cuban (1992), García revisits the multigenerational del Pino family, which has sprawled since we last saw them, from Miami to Los Angeles, with stops in Moscow and Berlin. Two decades have passed, and the willful Pilar, a teenager in Dreaming, is now a middle-aged sculptor with a young son of her own; the motherless Ivanito has grown into a polyglot drag queen; Lourdes, Pilar’s mother, as imperious as ever, has involved herself in Miami politics; and Celia, the 90-something matriarch, is revisiting an old flame. García, who has published half a dozen novels since Dreaming, did not really need to come full circle, and perhaps it would have been better if she hadn’t. Though her latest book has the same fluid momentum, flowing dialogue, and flights of magical realism, it doesn’t have the same charming magic. García keeps trying to hit the same note. Again and again, she returns to vivid images from the earlier book—like Pilar’s painting of the Statue of Liberty with a safety pin stuck through the nose—which, like carbon copies, lose their vibrancy with each repetition. The plotline isn’t much to speak of, and the prose isn’t quite as fresh as it might have been—there are all too many adverbs, so Celia, hospitalized, feels a “sharp twinge” where an IV is “snugly taped.” A subplot about a long-lost twin feels like a stretch. All in all, the book has a kind of matte, lackluster quality that is especially disappointing when compared to García’s earlier work.
The del Pino family continues their machinations but without the same vibrancy.Pub Date: July 18, 2023
ISBN: 9780593534748
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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