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3.88 AVERAGE
3.88 AVERAGE
So close to 4 Stars. There are truly wondrous segments of prose, and Clement tells tales of heartbreak with honesty and grit while avoiding melodrama. There were a handful of moments when the transitions from plot sections felt either forced or too swift. But I was certainly engrossed.
Oh wow! What a book. It will stay with me...
- She told me to tell you love is not a feeling. It's a sacrifice.
- The best thing you can be in Mexico is an ugly girl.
- I told everyone a boy was born, she said. If I were a girl then I would be stolen.
- As soon as someone heard the sound of an SUV approaching, or saw a black dot in the distance or two or three black dots, all girls ran to the holes.
- Our men crossed the river to the United States. They dipped their feet in the water and waded up to their waists but they were dead when they got to the other side.
- Son of a bitch, my mother said again and again, for years. She never said his name again. He was Song of a Bitch forever after.
- Of course, the USA-to Mexico rumor road was the most powerful rumor route in the whole world. If you did not know the truth, you knew the rumor and the rumor was always a lot, lot more than the truth.
- Don't ever pray for love and health, Mother said. Or money. If God Hears what you really want He will not give it to you. Guaranteed. When my father left my mother said, Get down on your knees and pray for spoons.
- If you are going to kill me tomorrow, you might as well kill me today.
Always be the cook, she said. Never let anyone cook for you.
The truth was we knew the cause behind the deformities on our mountains. Everyone knew that the spraying of poisons to kill the crops of Marijuana and poppies was harming our people.
- When we looked at him, we looked at ourselves. Every imperfection our skin scars, things we had never even noticed, we saw in him.
Jose Rosa tasted like glass windows, cement, and elevators to the moon.
That day all anyone could hear was the silence of cell phones. That was it. It was the sound of Paula stolen. That was the song.
I could see the cigarette-burn stars that made up Orion and Taurus. Even her feet were covered in round burns. Paula had walked through the Milky Way and every star had burned her body.
- Everything looked as if Paula and her mother were about to return. Yes, my mother said. This is how you disappear: as if you're going to appear.
I closed my hands into fists so that I would not start to count the amount of people we had lost on my fingers.
- Luna said, can you believe that there are only 26 letters to say everything? There are only 26 letters to talk about love and jealousy and God.
- Listen, there is no way I want to be buried in a cemetery with all those dead people.
- She sleeps because she prefers dreams, not because she is tired.
- If I had shoes would I give them to her? I knew I probably wouldn't. In only a few days the jail had modified me. I thought about what Violeta had said earlier, how people outside forgot you in only three days.
The ground here is so cold, she said. Yes, in this place even the sun is cold.
- She told me to tell you love is not a feeling. It's a sacrifice.
- The best thing you can be in Mexico is an ugly girl.
- I told everyone a boy was born, she said. If I were a girl then I would be stolen.
- As soon as someone heard the sound of an SUV approaching, or saw a black dot in the distance or two or three black dots, all girls ran to the holes.
- Our men crossed the river to the United States. They dipped their feet in the water and waded up to their waists but they were dead when they got to the other side.
- Son of a bitch, my mother said again and again, for years. She never said his name again. He was Song of a Bitch forever after.
- Of course, the USA-to Mexico rumor road was the most powerful rumor route in the whole world. If you did not know the truth, you knew the rumor and the rumor was always a lot, lot more than the truth.
- Don't ever pray for love and health, Mother said. Or money. If God Hears what you really want He will not give it to you. Guaranteed. When my father left my mother said, Get down on your knees and pray for spoons.
- If you are going to kill me tomorrow, you might as well kill me today.
Always be the cook, she said. Never let anyone cook for you.
The truth was we knew the cause behind the deformities on our mountains. Everyone knew that the spraying of poisons to kill the crops of Marijuana and poppies was harming our people.
- When we looked at him, we looked at ourselves. Every imperfection our skin scars, things we had never even noticed, we saw in him.
Jose Rosa tasted like glass windows, cement, and elevators to the moon.
That day all anyone could hear was the silence of cell phones. That was it. It was the sound of Paula stolen. That was the song.
I could see the cigarette-burn stars that made up Orion and Taurus. Even her feet were covered in round burns. Paula had walked through the Milky Way and every star had burned her body.
- Everything looked as if Paula and her mother were about to return. Yes, my mother said. This is how you disappear: as if you're going to appear.
I closed my hands into fists so that I would not start to count the amount of people we had lost on my fingers.
- Luna said, can you believe that there are only 26 letters to say everything? There are only 26 letters to talk about love and jealousy and God.
- Listen, there is no way I want to be buried in a cemetery with all those dead people.
- She sleeps because she prefers dreams, not because she is tired.
- If I had shoes would I give them to her? I knew I probably wouldn't. In only a few days the jail had modified me. I thought about what Violeta had said earlier, how people outside forgot you in only three days.
The ground here is so cold, she said. Yes, in this place even the sun is cold.
Clement has dug into life in a village of women outside Acapulco, Mexico where the men have moved away seeking opportunity and the cartels reign supreme.
"Love is not a feeling. It's a sacrifice."
Ladydi (yes named after that Lady Di) carries us through her adolescence. It's a world where the worst thing is to be born a girl, and the second worst is to be born a pretty girl. They chop off their hair and black out their teeth and smear dirt on their faces and hide in holes in the ground to evade being kidnapped and trafficked by the cartel.
This is a hard book where violence proliferates with a Tarantino-esque matter of factness that propels the story without dwelling too long on any one horror. There's always something worse, more extreme, more exacting around the corner and Clement's narrative pushes into very uncomfortable places while somehow maintaining a humorous thread.
It's brilliant.
Because while the subject matter is tough, Clement's writing is delightful. Her characters, reminiscent of early Allende, are outrageous and unique and passionate and enthralling. They endure atrocities and don't run around feeling sorry for themselves. Oh the luxury! They have to keep going.
Luna, whose arm has been amputated, pins the unneeded sleeve from all of her dresses into a shrine to her lost limb above her bed. Need I say more?
"Don't ever pray for love and health, mother said, or money. If God hears what you really want he will not give it to you. Guaranteed."
Said by the woman who won't clean up blood because it's "not her thing," but she will show you how to bury a body.
Also, the audiobook narrator is fantastic.
"Love is not a feeling. It's a sacrifice."
Ladydi (yes named after that Lady Di) carries us through her adolescence. It's a world where the worst thing is to be born a girl, and the second worst is to be born a pretty girl. They chop off their hair and black out their teeth and smear dirt on their faces and hide in holes in the ground to evade being kidnapped and trafficked by the cartel.
This is a hard book where violence proliferates with a Tarantino-esque matter of factness that propels the story without dwelling too long on any one horror. There's always something worse, more extreme, more exacting around the corner and Clement's narrative pushes into very uncomfortable places while somehow maintaining a humorous thread.
It's brilliant.
Because while the subject matter is tough, Clement's writing is delightful. Her characters, reminiscent of early Allende, are outrageous and unique and passionate and enthralling. They endure atrocities and don't run around feeling sorry for themselves. Oh the luxury! They have to keep going.
Luna, whose arm has been amputated, pins the unneeded sleeve from all of her dresses into a shrine to her lost limb above her bed. Need I say more?
"Don't ever pray for love and health, mother said, or money. If God hears what you really want he will not give it to you. Guaranteed."
Said by the woman who won't clean up blood because it's "not her thing," but she will show you how to bury a body.
Also, the audiobook narrator is fantastic.
دلم میخواد فکر کنم همهی همهی همهش تخیلات نویسنده بوده. چون حتی ۱٪ واقعی بودن این همه ظلم علیه زنان در هر نقطهای از جهان دردناکه برام.
“If anyone wanted to create a symbol or a flag for our piece of earth on Earth it should be a plastic flip flop.”
This one knocked the wind right out of me. Picked up sight-unseen based on an interesting cover and a commitment to read more women of color... I feel like I hit the lottery. Clement’s characters come to life and their state of heightened fear is palpable.
This one knocked the wind right out of me. Picked up sight-unseen based on an interesting cover and a commitment to read more women of color... I feel like I hit the lottery. Clement’s characters come to life and their state of heightened fear is palpable.
Mash-ups rarely do justice, but let me give this a try just for fun: One Hundred Years of Solitude meets American Dirt?
OK, not quite. But there is something about Clement's creation of young Ladydi Garcia Martinez, and her remote mountain village home in Guerrero State, just an hour from Acapulco, that made me think of the rich tropical tales in Solitude. Ladydi's story - one of rural poverty and the injustice and suffering meted against women by men - told with very dark humour that can come across as both fabulist and also intrinsically woven with the jungle landscape, describes horrifying events that occur in contemporary Mexico. And narcotraffickers committing horrific crimes of violence that transform the social fabric, along with the fast-paced narrative, do evoke American Dirt.
Clement writes poetically but with a clear-eyed view of everyday terror and despair. This is a compelling read.
OK, not quite. But there is something about Clement's creation of young Ladydi Garcia Martinez, and her remote mountain village home in Guerrero State, just an hour from Acapulco, that made me think of the rich tropical tales in Solitude. Ladydi's story - one of rural poverty and the injustice and suffering meted against women by men - told with very dark humour that can come across as both fabulist and also intrinsically woven with the jungle landscape, describes horrifying events that occur in contemporary Mexico. And narcotraffickers committing horrific crimes of violence that transform the social fabric, along with the fast-paced narrative, do evoke American Dirt.
Clement writes poetically but with a clear-eyed view of everyday terror and despair. This is a compelling read.
Incredible story. This short read gave me all the feels.
Lyrical, almost stream of consciousness, novella about Ladydi a young girl who grew up in rural Mexico.
