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A review by szeglin
Queen of America by Luis Alberto Urrea
2.0
ARC received through the Goodreads First Reads program.
I made a bit of a blunder when I received this book--I didn't immediately find a copy of The Hummingbird's Daughter to read first. As a result, I felt like I was plunked down in the middle of a story, and it took a bit of flailing around to find my place and grab hold of the narrative thread. Granted, I still have not read The Hummingbird's Daughter, so I can't be certain that's why I didn't enjoy Queen of America as much as I expected to.
Teresita is 19 when the story begins. She and her father are living in Arizona, away from their home in Mexico. At the beginning of the story there are assassins after Teresita, but that sort of threat isn't present throughout the whole book. I believe that's a holdover from the first book, but it felt a little disjointed to me.
One device I found interesting was the way the passage of time sped up. At the beginning of the book, Teresita is 19. Time seems to pass slowly through the experiences at the beginning of the book, then speeds up as she travels to San Francisco and beyond under her contract with the Consortium. This seemed to be indicative of both how time speeds up as you get older and how urban America is more of a whirlwind of activity than rural Arizona or Mexico.
I love the way Urrea writes conversations. They're beautiful, and pick up the pace a bit in an often meandering book. The book, as a whole, doesn't seem to follow a well-structured story, but is more of a series of medications on different episodes in Teresita's life. In this particular case, that style didn't work for me very well.
I wanted to like this book much more than I actually did. I felt lost not knowing the backstory, and although some of the gaps were filled in there were still enough of them for me to really feel I was missing things. The story didn't really grab me, either--largely because I didn't feel strong connections to the characters.
Teresita, the Saint of Cabora, was a real woman. What's more, Urrea is a relative--Teresita was his great-aunt.
I made a bit of a blunder when I received this book--I didn't immediately find a copy of The Hummingbird's Daughter to read first. As a result, I felt like I was plunked down in the middle of a story, and it took a bit of flailing around to find my place and grab hold of the narrative thread. Granted, I still have not read The Hummingbird's Daughter, so I can't be certain that's why I didn't enjoy Queen of America as much as I expected to.
Teresita is 19 when the story begins. She and her father are living in Arizona, away from their home in Mexico. At the beginning of the story there are assassins after Teresita, but that sort of threat isn't present throughout the whole book. I believe that's a holdover from the first book, but it felt a little disjointed to me.
One device I found interesting was the way the passage of time sped up. At the beginning of the book, Teresita is 19. Time seems to pass slowly through the experiences at the beginning of the book, then speeds up as she travels to San Francisco and beyond under her contract with the Consortium. This seemed to be indicative of both how time speeds up as you get older and how urban America is more of a whirlwind of activity than rural Arizona or Mexico.
I love the way Urrea writes conversations. They're beautiful, and pick up the pace a bit in an often meandering book. The book, as a whole, doesn't seem to follow a well-structured story, but is more of a series of medications on different episodes in Teresita's life. In this particular case, that style didn't work for me very well.
I wanted to like this book much more than I actually did. I felt lost not knowing the backstory, and although some of the gaps were filled in there were still enough of them for me to really feel I was missing things. The story didn't really grab me, either--largely because I didn't feel strong connections to the characters.
Teresita, the Saint of Cabora, was a real woman. What's more, Urrea is a relative--Teresita was his great-aunt.