An eloquent literary dissection of the divide between the United States and Mexico.
Vaillant’s debut fiction follows Hector Lazaro from Mexico’s Sierra Juárez to Oaxaca’s el Centro to an old tanker truck poised to sneak into El Norte, the promised land.
Because of his abuelo, an old man deeply rooted in Zapotec lands and culture, Hector carries an elemental connection to Oaxaca, a place somewhat Spanish but mostly Indio. But dreaming of El Norte, Hector’s father took his son into the U.S. for a few years, until la Migra found them. Home in Mexico, Hector earned his way into college, but his father kept insisting Hector head north, saying of Oaxaca, "[n]othing is changing in five hundred years." Now Hector’s on the border, but it’s only because he tried to help his childhood friend Cesar, ending up pursued by the federales because Cesar has a secret. Now the friends, and other desperate migrants, are trapped in an abandoned tanker truck, "smelling like the intestine of some animal, slowly digesting us." Cesar has a head injury, and Hector has a bit of water and Cesar’s cellphone with one American contact, AnniMac, but no signal. Vaillant’s tension-filled narrative has Hector relating his story into a sound file, all while meditating on "the distance between Hope and God and Death growing smaller until it is impossible to tell one from the others." As Hector tends to comatose Cesar, his deep and poignant story unfolds, covering his early life and his chance encounter with Cesar, whose research discovered clandestine information about KØrtez400, a GMO seed, which left Cesar pursued by murderous government bureaucrats. With superb minor characters like Don Serafín, "a rich and powerful chingón," and Hector’s abuelo, a man who had his own deep secret linked to 1930s work with an American archaeologist, Hector’s reflections on Oaxacan culture fascinate. Vaillant writes with power and emotion, affection and respect for the Zapotec people and lands, a fertile place, where "the corn made possible everything we do and are," now imperiled by international agribusiness.
An eloquent literary dissection of the divide between the United States and Mexico.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-544-31549-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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