From Publishers Weekly
Fuguet is the central figure of a loose group of young Latin American writers-a movement known as McOndo-who identify themselves in opposition to magical realism. In the author's second pop-culture saturated novel to be published in English (after Bad Vibes), seismologist Beltran Soler tells the story of his childhood via a catalogue of movies that influenced him at pivotal moments. The setup is stiff-the adult Beltran is on his way to a conference in Tokyo when he is inspired to hole up in a hotel room in L.A. and begin writing his film-linked memoirs-but once Fuguet begins piecing together Beltran's lopsided, bicultural life, the novel speeds along, overflowing with ironic insight. Born in 1964, Beltran lives in Encino, Calif., until he is 10, when his family (father, mother and younger sister Manuela) move back to Santiago. Bourgeois in Chile, but barely middle class in the U.S., the family inhabits a weird in-between world. In Encino, Beltran reenacts The Poseidon Adventure with his friends; in Santiago, the family across the street (dubbed the Chilean Waltons by Beltran) wins a family singing contest with its Sound of Music medleys. The ongoing political upheaval in Chile feels like another Technicolor drama, with a few alarming incursions into reality. But the novel's true turmoil is personal: Beltran's difficult adjustment to life in Chile, his adolescence and his family's collapse (his father leaves his mother the night Saturday Night Fever opens). The movie titles heading each chapter serve as subtle triggers for reminiscence, but never become a structural straitjacket, and Fuguet's pop archness is tempered with honest feeling. Despite the rocky start, this is a fresh, notable effort.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Beltran Soler is a seismologist with a fractured family and a shaky sense of self. Born in Chile and brought to L.A. as an infant, he was happily assimilated as a young child. At 10, however, a summer vacation to Chile turned into a permanent stay, and Beltran became an outsider in the land of his birth: culturally displaced, struggling with the language--and just in time for puberty. As the story begins, Beltran is en route to Tokyo for a teaching engagement when he learns from his sister that their grandfather--the inspiration for Beltran's career--has died in an earthquake. Extending his layover in L.A., Beltran holes up in a hotel room, obsessively creating lists of movies, which he e-mails to a friendly Californian he met on the plane. Revisiting his childhood by remembering the movies, he makes some sense of a life that was, in the first place, partly lived through movies. Fuguet, an antimagic realist, creates a thoroughly contemporary coming-of-age tale steeped in sly social analysis, salted with pathos, and leavened with humor.
Keir GraffCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
