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somanybooksineedmoretime's review against another edition
3.0
Method: audiobook
Rating: 3/5 stars
Drama: 4/5
Thoughts: Very interesting read - I was shocked I hadn't read this before..
knel15's review against another edition
2.0
Nineteen-year-old Eddie lives in Fresno, California and just wants to make it through the day. A college drop-out, Eddie is being pulled from all angles; His father, two uncles, and best friend are all dead, his mother is distant and unforgiving, his aunt is desperate for Eddie to seek revenge against the person who killed his cousin, and he is being hunted by the local gangsters. With cockroaches as roommates and a dead end job, Eddie finds himself being drawn closer and closer to the violence that simmers just under the surface.
Buried Onions is a poetic and claustrophobic story filled with incredibly descriptive imagery. It highlights the life and struggle of a young Latino man as he tries to find his way through the violence and poverty that he has been dealt. While considered a classic, Buried Onions tends to be overlooked. The poetic writing can make the book a bit challenging to read at certain times and could possibly be a deterrent to reluctant readers. At the same time, the book approaches topics that may draw readers attention- violence, action, poverty. Buried Onions bucks the traditional narrative that says everything will be okay in the end. Recommended for reluctant readers (who feel up to the challenge of a little bit of poetic writing) ages 13 and up.
Buried Onions is a poetic and claustrophobic story filled with incredibly descriptive imagery. It highlights the life and struggle of a young Latino man as he tries to find his way through the violence and poverty that he has been dealt. While considered a classic, Buried Onions tends to be overlooked. The poetic writing can make the book a bit challenging to read at certain times and could possibly be a deterrent to reluctant readers. At the same time, the book approaches topics that may draw readers attention- violence, action, poverty. Buried Onions bucks the traditional narrative that says everything will be okay in the end. Recommended for reluctant readers (who feel up to the challenge of a little bit of poetic writing) ages 13 and up.
cbrown12496's review against another edition
3.0
This is a great coming-of-age story, and a rare one in that it follows a minority boy in an under-funded West Coast community. Eddie's a 19-year-old boy whose circumstances are relentless. On the first page we learn that his cousin has been murdered. It takes everything in him to not fall into the very patterns of life he is trying to avoid--namely the violence and apathy of his neighborhood in Fresno, California. He imagines, per the title, that there must be onions buried under his whole town, the sorrow is so ubiquitous.
This is the kind of book that could get younger students excited about reading. It tackles real problems in real settings with real attitudes and offers real insight into the minds of, for all intents and purposes, real people. In other words, the novel is very real.
Where I feel it derailing a bit is in the Soto's tone. Eddie narrates the novel, but his voice is never so consistently his own that I am able to believe that it's not just Soto pulling strings in the background. Soto's poetic use of language (he is, after all, a poet by trade) sometimes feels ham-handed . Given what the author wants us to believe about Eddie, poetic is not particularly one of the characteristics we see in him, and yet Soto forces hyper-stylized language to gurgle from his narrator's mind. As a result, we get almost laughable sentences like, when Eddie refers to a couple of cops, "they smelled like hamburgers and hate".
I also have to take issue a bit with Soto's portrayal of female characters. One could argue that he simply tries to see them through the eyes of his adolescent narrator, but all of the women in this novel ultimately seem like little more than cardboard cutouts of women than actual humans caught in the same system of violence and boredom. They are all either flirtatious sex-dolls or nagging nuisances. This is most evident with author's treatment of Norma, a girl Eddie knows from high school. We meet her only very briefly as a "girl-next-door" type who works at Eddie's college cafeteria before she calls Eddie up one evening to come lounge by her pool. Suddenly, we find Eddie ogling her bikinied breasts and kissing her neck--and then the scene ends. It's abrupt, it's objectifying, and the little information that does push the plot forward could have been presented in a number of other ways. For all of Eddie's maturation, he makes very little in the way of his perception of women.
Overall, Buried Onions does what fiction should do--i.e., show us what it is like to be human. Despite the particularity of the matter, Soto manages to touch on universal themes simultaneously. But it leaves us wanting a narrator who is more believable and who is capable of more growth than simply coming to terms with his own sorrow.
This is the kind of book that could get younger students excited about reading. It tackles real problems in real settings with real attitudes and offers real insight into the minds of, for all intents and purposes, real people. In other words, the novel is very real.
Where I feel it derailing a bit is in the Soto's tone. Eddie narrates the novel, but his voice is never so consistently his own that I am able to believe that it's not just Soto pulling strings in the background. Soto's poetic use of language (he is, after all, a poet by trade) sometimes feels ham-handed . Given what the author wants us to believe about Eddie, poetic is not particularly one of the characteristics we see in him, and yet Soto forces hyper-stylized language to gurgle from his narrator's mind. As a result, we get almost laughable sentences like, when Eddie refers to a couple of cops, "they smelled like hamburgers and hate".
I also have to take issue a bit with Soto's portrayal of female characters. One could argue that he simply tries to see them through the eyes of his adolescent narrator, but all of the women in this novel ultimately seem like little more than cardboard cutouts of women than actual humans caught in the same system of violence and boredom. They are all either flirtatious sex-dolls or nagging nuisances. This is most evident with author's treatment of Norma, a girl Eddie knows from high school. We meet her only very briefly as a "girl-next-door" type who works at Eddie's college cafeteria before she calls Eddie up one evening to come lounge by her pool. Suddenly, we find Eddie ogling her bikinied breasts and kissing her neck--and then the scene ends. It's abrupt, it's objectifying, and the little information that does push the plot forward could have been presented in a number of other ways. For all of Eddie's maturation, he makes very little in the way of his perception of women.
Overall, Buried Onions does what fiction should do--i.e., show us what it is like to be human. Despite the particularity of the matter, Soto manages to touch on universal themes simultaneously. But it leaves us wanting a narrator who is more believable and who is capable of more growth than simply coming to terms with his own sorrow.
jennvreads's review against another edition
1.0
I read this book my junior year in HS with a student teacher. It was the most awful book I had probably EVER read. I would suggest you do NOT read this book if you want to keep your sanity
boithorn's review against another edition
4.0
A short, self-contained story about the difficulties of walking the straight and narrow. I think the book does "edgy" well, with the dialogue and narration of Eddie being truthful in a way that I think a lot of "shocking" YA sidesteps. Everything about Eddie's Fresno feels lived-in, and that makes the things that try to distract him from his hopes for an honest life so much more frustrating.
pyrrhicspondee's review against another edition
5.0
I'm teaching this book right now, and Jeff just finished it, too. This is one of the most relentless hot, uncomfortable and miserable books I've read in a long time. And I mean that as a very good thing.
iceangel9's review against another edition
3.0
Eddie lives in the barrio in Fresno, California. His father, two uncles, and best friend are dead. He does not want to be a part of the gang lifestyle that surrounds him, but is it possible to get out or will he be forced into a lifestyle he doesn't want? A novel that asks the question of whether change is possible or if we are forced by our environment into a specific lifestyle. If you enjoy Soto's work, you will like this one as well. You can't help cheering for Eddie.
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