A Week in October

Elizabeth Subercaseaux’s novel, A Week in October, is the story of a death. Clara has been diagnosed with cancer and at her husband’s suggestion has begun to keep a journal during her final months. Her husband, Lionel, discovers the notebook and despite feelings of guilt, reads it behind Clara’s back. What makes the novel so [...]

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The Flowers

I was disappointed with Dagoberto Gilb’s The Flowers. I’ve enjoyed a number of Gilb’s short stories, but I kept getting bogged down in the novel. The Flowers is narrated by Sonny, a teenage boy who has just moved to a new apartment complex with his mother and step-father. The set up is quite contrived, while [...]

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Tournament of Books 2008

Oscar won! Junot Díaz’s, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, won this year’s Tournament of Books. It also won the NBCC award and the Pulitzer for fiction. I was glad to see the Savage Detectives make a return in the Zombie round (the round where reader favorites get a second chance.) Then it [...]

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Forthcoming book reviews

I’m very behind, but I plan on posting reviews for Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcón, She’s Gone by Kwame Dawes and Michele Martinez’s, Cover-Up sometime in October.

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A Handbook to Luck and The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue

Cristina García’s (Dreaming in Cuban) latest novel, A Handbook to Luck, follows the lives of three people, Enrique a Cuban American trying to make it in the United States, Leila a wealthy Iranian and Marta a poor Salvadoran who migrates to the U.S.. Despite García’s clear prose and good hand for description, the novel has [...]

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The Finishing School

The Finishing School is the follow-up to Michele Martinez’s Most Wanted and the second book in the series featuring Melanie Vargas, an assistant prosecutor for the New York City U.S. Attorney’s Office and recently divorced single mom. As assistant prosecutor, Melanie gets involved in solving the murders of two teenage girls from Miss Holbrooke’s, an [...]

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¡Caramba! A Tale Told in Turns of a Card

Nina Maria Martínez’s meandering novel is a delight. It follows its two twenty-something heroines and an assortment of wacky secondary characters through a sleepy California town, Lava Landing, located at the base of an inactive volcano. Natalie and Consuelo provide necessary relief for fans of women’s fiction who are tired of chick lit. The girls [...]

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War by Candlelight

War by Candlelight is worthwhile collection of short stories by first time author Daniel Alarcón, that alternate between modern day Peru and the United States. The first piece, “Flood,” set in Peru, starts the book off violently with a flood, a community riot and the arrest of three teenage boys. The boys are briefly taken [...]

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Mambo Peligroso

Mambo Peligroso by Patricia Chao The first five chapters of this novel are like a dance marathon. Not much fun, and the dancing never stops. These first chapters are narrated by Catalina, a Japanese-Cuban-American woman, who discovers herself through mambo dancing. The author clearly has done her research. The introductory chapters are packed with dance [...]

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Dirty Blonde and Half Cuban

Although written in a breezy style, this novel is a serious first person account about contemporary Cuba. The narrator Alysia moved to Cuba to search for her birth father. Alysia registers for a student visa and rents a room, but almost immediately has her nest egg of $25,000 stolen by her landlords. Left with no [...]

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