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Fuentes uses Artemio Cruz to tell the tale of Revolutionary Mexico. A young idealist with a passion for social justice, Cruz becomes corrupted by power and money. We first meet him as a rich old man on his deathbed struggling with the inevitability of encroaching death. As the old man relives his life, we see the many facets of the individual, and we also come to view him as a symbol of Mexico. Cruz and the Mexican Revolution began as advocates for the rights of the common people, the working class and the peasants, only to be co-opted by the lures of luxury. This is a powerful literary tour-de-force by one of the modern masters of fiction; don't miss it!

Reviewed by Mark B., Main Library

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Set in war-torn El Salvador, this book spans the years from the 1930s to the 1970s, as the women of two families share the devastation that has ravished their families. Most of her family slaughtered by government forces in 1932, Mercedes Prietas and her daughter Jacinta make their way to San Salvador to work for the Contreras family and its matriarch Elena. Through the eyes of these women we watch enthralled by the daily realities, as a nation is ripped apart by class struggle. Benitez is not a propagandist for either side; she allows these fully human women to tell it as they see it. In the end this powerful tale praises only the resilience of humanity in the face of madness.

Reviewed by Mark B., Main Library

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The four Mirabal sisters become embroiled in the fight for democracy in the Dominican Republic during Trujillo's dictatorship. Because of their spirit and outspokenness, they were known by the resistance forces as the butterflies. Alvarez uses the technique of writing each chapter in a different sister's voice, which insinuates each sister's personality on you. Past and present are also interspersed as grief-stricken sister Dede tells how the others met with a tragic end. By the end of the book, the reader understands that the adage "when you die for your country, you do not die in vain" is not so simple. Dying for a noble cause in a country constantly in political turmoil does little to console the loved ones left behind.

Reviewed by Lynn G., University City Regional

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The barely contained passions infusing Like Water for Chocolate create romantic, emotional, and family tensions that find relief and expression in the culinary efforts of Tita as her preparation of each chapter's recipe flows seamlessly into the telling of this wonder-filled story. Forced by tradition to forsake marriage in order to care for her mother, Tita pours her feelings into her cooking. From the longing and misery caused by the tears in her sister's wedding cake to the aphrodisiac-like quality of her quail or chiles in walnut sauce, Tita's dishes communicate her true self and enable her to find love. This fine example of Magical Realism will enchant readers with its understanding of the heart.

Reviewed by Charles D., Morrison Regional

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When I first read this book I was in a decidedly unromantic phase and was not at all interested in cooking. By the time I had finished, I felt ecstatic and I was itching to cook. A delicious book!
-Heather, Charlotte

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In Macondo, an early 19th century South American village, flowers rain from the sky, the dead routinely converse with the living and the inhabitants survive 32 bloody revolutions and a plague of insomnia. This is the story of its founders, José �rcadio Buendí¡ and his wife Ursula, and five subsequent generations of Buendí¡³. The Buendí¡ men, all named Arcadio or Aureliano, lead fantastic, adventurous lives and engage in passionate love affairs, sometimes with sisters and aunts. Of the women, one is so innocent that she spontaneously ascends to heaven while folding linen and another eats dirt when she?s depressed. With rich, descriptive prose, Garcí¡ Marquéº creates a family chronicle in the form of a dream-like narrative that blurs the line between reality and illusion. It is a century-long history of a people and a place that unfolds in an instant of memory.

Reviewed by Peter J., Carmel Branch

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Here is an exquisitely crafted, painfully honest tale of the Salvadoran people during the bloody 1980s. Framed between the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the massacre by the armies of El Salvador and Honduras of refugees trying to cross the river separating the two countries, 9 year-old Nicolas tells us the horrors of war. This child’s perspective neutralizes all politics – for Nicolas it doesn’t matter which side the bullets come from, his mother is still dead and he and his grandfather are in danger. Nicolas and his grandfather are characters that will claim a special place in your heart, where they will live long after the last page. Unapologetic, tender and powerful in its simplicity, this novel should mark Benitez as one of the best contemporary writers.

Reviewed by Mark B., Main Library

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An old widow, Consuelo, has hired the handsome young scholar, Felipe Montero, to edit her dead husband’s memoirs. In the process, the widow’s hauntingly beautiful niece, Aura, casts a spell of love and desire over Montero. By the time he learns the truth about Aura and Consuelo he is already lost. While Fuentes is not known as a writer of horror, this brilliantly horrific novella helped to launch the career of one of the brightest stars in the firmament of contemporary literature. This little treasure will chill your spine, shiver your bones, and even worse, it may just capture your soul as you turn the pages.

Reviewed by Mark B., Main Library

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Written in a lush, descriptive voice, Ana Menendez’s debut lets us into the world of Cuban émigrés living in present day Miami. The author, herself a Cuban-American, paints this community as only someone on the inside can, by taking care to give us its beauty and its pain in equal, measured doses. In these stories, as in life, the characters come to realize that their romanticized notions of people, places, and relationships seldom match the realities that they struggle to live with. These stark truths are made more palatable with Menendez’s plain honesty and wit.

Reviewed by James K., Freedom Regional

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Laura Diaz is the most fully realized, and memorable character Fuentes has created since Artemio Cruz in the 1960s. Through her Fuentes tells the tale of Mexico’s cultural, social and political history with all the drama intact. Born into an upper class family during the rule of the dictator Porfiro Diaz, Laura, and through her the reader, watches the world as it is turned upside down by revolution. Once in power the Revolution becomes, as usually happens when the "r" is capitalized, the thing it most despised – entrenched wealth and power. Showing the virtuosity of his talents and imagination, Fuentes has written a history, only nominally fictionalized, of Mexico in the Twentieth Century from the point of view of one very strong woman.

Reviewed by Mark B., Main Library

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In this small, brilliant, novel Fuentes examines universal themes like art, music, love, death, and gender. Using mirroring narratives, one spanning the last half of the twentieth century and the other prehistoric, Fuentes revisits one of his central themes – the nature of time. Here is a tale of obsession between two people and two times. In our time there is Inez, Mexican diva, and Gabriel Atlan-Ferrar, European master conductor. Their obsession centers around three productions of Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust. The prehistoric mirror narrates the first human interaction between a man and a woman. This is a magnificent interweaving of love and obsession, life and death, male and female by Mexico’s brightest literary star.

Reviewed by Mark B., Main Library

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Allende?s first novel is the epic story of the Trueba family and their times. In an unnamed South American country beginning as the 20th century opens, the novel, filled with magnificent characters, examines the power and fragility of love, passion, power, politics, and what passes for reality. As in most families, and especially in tradition bound societies, the patriarch tries to control the lives around him, as his upper class standing has taught to expect he can. He fails, but from failure sprouts growth, for him and his family. From the clairvoyant matriarch, Clara, to Esteban, the stern and macho patriarch, to their granddaughter Alba whose spirit and self-determination link her to the future, House of the Spirits is a character-driven delight full of depth.

Reviewed by Mark B., Main Library

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This is the continuing story of Rose and Eliza Sommers. It tells the story of Eliza’s granddaughter, Aurora De Valle. It weaves together the story of the powerful De Valle family and the Sommers family. Eliza is now living in San Francisco’s Chinatown with her husband, a Chinese healer named Tao Ch’ein. She has two children, Lucky and Lynn. Lynn has a daughter but dies in childbirth. Aurora is sent to live with her father’s family, the powerful De Valles. The story chronicles Aurora’s life and how the lives of both of the families are connected. It is an engaging and interesting look at family life and society during the 1800’s.

Reviewed by Rachel K., University City Regional

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Have you ever wanted to take a trip to the Amazon? Alexander had never even considered the idea, but all of a sudden he finds himself in the Amazon with his eccentric grandmother, a reporter for International Geographic magazine, and a team of researchers. Their mission is to document the Beast, an elusive creature that most people have only heard stories about. Separated from his family, including his sick mother, Alexander must learn how to survive in one of the world’s few remaining untamed environments. Allende excels in writing novels that are both magical and realistic. Join Alexander on a journey of a lifetime. You won’t be disappointed!

Reviewed by Christine B., South County Regional

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Our unnamed narrator spent most of his life believing that love can be purchased. On the eve of his ninetieth birthday he decides he needs one more night in the arms of a young virgin. He has spent his life as a journalist and columnist in his Colombian hometown, but never written anything of lasting value. Similarly, he’s spent his manhood in brothels, confusing lust with love. Finally, in his ninetieth year, he falls in love with the young virgin procured for him by his favorite madam, but whom he has only watched in her sleep. Now that real love, and not its cheap imitator, has taken up residence in his soul he finds that he writes pieces of real value, including this beautiful novella.

Reviewed by Mark B., Main Library

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A new voice is moving to the forefront of a new generation of Latin American novelists, that of Edmundo Paz Soldan of Bolivia. In Turing’s Delirium Paz Soldan shows a society on the verge of a revolution against both the government and globalization. The soldiers of the oppressed include hackers who use computer viruses instead of bullets. The fictitious city of Rio Fugitivo marks the epicenter of this struggle that brings together traditional revolutionaries and the nation’s urban youth steeped in pop culture. Rio Fugitivo is home to the head of the Resistance, a young hacker who calls himself Kandinsky, and the Black Chamber which is the section of Bolivia’s intelligence service which seeks to intercept and decipher encrypted messages. This fast paced literary thriller focuses on both national and individual responsibility.

Reviewed by Mark B., Main Library

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Just as the mambo works its magic in the souls of Lima’s young during the summer of 1950, so the Chilean girl, “Lucy”, wraps herself around Ricardo’s heart. When the Chilean disguise falls apart, “Lucy” disappears. This is the beginning of a rather one sided love affair that spans the last half of the 20th century, and the globe from Lima, to Paris, to London, to Tokyo, to Madrid. Using different names and different men, the “bad girl” constantly chases after the money and power she so craves. Ricardo, though devastated every time, seems content with the scraps she tosses his way. The novel explores the costs of obsession – Ricardo’s for the “bad girl” and hers for money and power.

Reviewed by Mark B., Main Library

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This story of the events surrounding the murder of a quite probably innocent man illustrates how the intimacy and tangled relationships that come with small town life lead to momentous shared experiences. The murder takes place on the morning after an elaborate wedding, after which the bride is returned. The town's residents, recovering from the previous night's revelries, all immediately know about the bride's shame. In fact, several members of the community know Santiago is to be murdered, but all passively watch as it happens. Marquez tells this story in his enigmatic style, dropping the narrative in scattered pieces and leaving the reader to decide what to make of it.

Reviewed by Meri H., University City Regional

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