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serrendipity 's review for:
High Spirits
by Camille Gomera-Tavarez
"Chacho, you. know I don't kiss the United States' colonizer ass either, don't even start. But, you wanna talk about fairy tales. They're not all fairy tales, some of this shit is real. And you gotta know that fairy tales, stories, things we teach kids -- these things show our values as a society."
I'm not usually a collection-of-short-stories kind of reader -- nothing against the genre, I just miss the narrative cohesion and finality that typically comes from a novel.
But I genuinely loved this debut collection from Camille Gomera-Tavarez, which follows the Belen/Jimennez family across several generations and an ocean. While I still found myself wondering what happened to each of the characters at the end of their story -- some recur throughout, mainly Gabriel, but some characters appear only once -- I think following the family increased that sense of connection and unity. I thought the last 4 stories were the strongest -- and while I appreciated the social commentary of all the stories, I gravitated a bit more towards the ones with a touch of magical realism. (I think IX, Life After the Storm was the most powerful and poignant.)
Highly recommend -- especially for Hispanic Heritage Month.
I'm not usually a collection-of-short-stories kind of reader -- nothing against the genre, I just miss the narrative cohesion and finality that typically comes from a novel.
But I genuinely loved this debut collection from Camille Gomera-Tavarez, which follows the Belen/Jimennez family across several generations and an ocean. While I still found myself wondering what happened to each of the characters at the end of their story -- some recur throughout, mainly Gabriel, but some characters appear only once -- I think following the family increased that sense of connection and unity. I thought the last 4 stories were the strongest -- and while I appreciated the social commentary of all the stories, I gravitated a bit more towards the ones with a touch of magical realism. (I think IX, Life After the Storm was the most powerful and poignant.)
Highly recommend -- especially for Hispanic Heritage Month.