Posted by guillermo maynez
on 17/10/2011, 17:38:11, in reply to "Re: Nominations for 2012"
189.140.167.94
I think I'll go for Elena Garro's "Recollection of Things to Come". It is the one that has sustained the test of time.
--Previous Message--
: Welcome back, boss lady
:
: I like your nominations. Half-Blood Blues and The
: Sisters Brothers are also on the Booker shortlist (the
: winner to be announced Tuesday). Those two books and
: The Free World are also on the Giller Prize shortlist
: (to be announced Nov. 8).
:
: Guillermo, were you going to make a choice from the
: five options you cited for a Mexican female author?
: Below is what you said. I think that's all we're
: missing now.
:
: Posted by Guillermo Maynez on 12/9/2011:
:
: 10. Now for the Mexican female author:
:
: There are several options available on Amazon:
:
: 1. Carmen Boullosa: "Leaving Tabasco". A
: Mexican woman recollects her life with her tyrannical
: grandmother in Southern Mexico. Heavy dose of Magical
: realism.
:
: 2. Carmen Boullosa: "They're Cows, We're
: Pigs". In 1666, 13-year-old Jean Smeeks leaves
: his native Flanders for Tortuga, notorious
: 17th-century pirate refuge. In the reeking, pitching
: quarters of the vessel, a woman reveals herself to
: him--and to him only. It is her fate that sets the
: novel's moral compass, for what attracts her is a
: renegade Tortugan community, the Brethren of the
: Coast--anti-colonialist buccaneers who represent, in
: part, the upside of lawlessness: communalism and no
: locked doors. The downside? Women are forbidden.
:
: 3. Carmen Boullosa: "Cleopatra Dismounts".
: Mexican author Boullosa plays with the life and myth
: of Cleopatra in her third novel to be published in the
: U.S., following Leaving Tabasco (2001) and They're
: Cows, We're Pigs (1997). Drawing on the writings of
: several ancient authors, including Sophocles, Cicero,
: and Virgil, Boullosa presents a Cleopatra different
: from the traditional, historical portrait, which came
: to us via the Romans, who had much reason to dislike
: her. Boullosa offers three possibilities, leaving us
: to decide which defines her best. Was she the lover of
: Marc Antony, too distraught to remain alive after his
: death? Or the young girl who disguised herself and
: went to live with a band of pirates in order to escape
: from her royal duties? Or a woman who learned the art
: of love and war from Hippolyta, the queen of the
: Amazons, and her tribe of women warriors?
:
: 4. Elena Garro: "Recollections of Things to
: Come". This remarkable first novel depicts life
: in the small Mexican town of Ixtepec during the grim
: days of the Revolution. The town tells its own story
: against a variegated background of political change,
: religious persecution, and social unrest. Miss Garro,
: who has also won a high reputation as a playwright, is
: a masterly storyteller. Although her plot is
: dramatically intense and suspenseful, the novel does
: not depend for its effectiveness on narrative
: continuity. It is a book of episodes, one that leaves
: the reader with a series of vivid impressions. The
: colors are bright, the smells pungent, the many
: characters clearly drawn in a few bold strokes.
:
: 5. Josefina Vicens: "The Empty Book". A
: forerunner of the Latin American metafiction boom of
: the 1960s, this novel by Mexican author and
: screenwriter Vicens was first published in Mexico in
: 1958. The new translation is a spare and striking
: first-person account of Jose Garcia, a middle-aged
: accountant tormented by the craving to write something
: "significant" and his belief that he will
: never be able to do so. He keeps two journals, one of
: events in his everyday life, the other an "empty
: book," and he can never quite find words
: important enough to fill its pages. Ironically, the
: "nothing" that he tells us in his everyday
: diary is the vivid, straightforward story of an
: ordinary man, which ultimately transcends the limits
: of the printed word to become a heroic tale of the
: struggles of Everyman.
:
:
:
:
Message Thread | Skip to this response ↓
« Back to index