Summer of the Mariposas
McCall, Guadalupe Garcia. Summer of the Mariposas. New York: Tu Books, 2012.
McCall is one of the Guests of Honor at Sirens 2013, which is going to be awesome--you should come!--so when I saw this book at the Strand I snapped it right up. I enjoyed it, but I also had some quibbles.
The book is billed as a Mexican-American fantasy retelling of the Odyssey, and in this case, the marketing didn't lie. The book follows Odilia and her four sisters in their quest to return a body they find in the Rio Grande to the man's family in Mexico and then to their grandmother's house and back again; along the way they are guided by La Llorona and face down a parlianment of lechuzas and the chupacabras, among others. The book was a page-turner, and I enjoyed the sisterhood among the characters very much. The book is definitely a gripping read--I was tearing through it even as my internal complaints accumulated, and I really did enjoy the portrait McCall drew of a family that straddles cultures and borders, and the way McCall fearlessly combined the elements of her stories into a new thing that is all its own.
( I wanted to like this book more than I did. )
McCall is one of the Guests of Honor at Sirens 2013, which is going to be awesome--you should come!--so when I saw this book at the Strand I snapped it right up. I enjoyed it, but I also had some quibbles.
The book is billed as a Mexican-American fantasy retelling of the Odyssey, and in this case, the marketing didn't lie. The book follows Odilia and her four sisters in their quest to return a body they find in the Rio Grande to the man's family in Mexico and then to their grandmother's house and back again; along the way they are guided by La Llorona and face down a parlianment of lechuzas and the chupacabras, among others. The book was a page-turner, and I enjoyed the sisterhood among the characters very much. The book is definitely a gripping read--I was tearing through it even as my internal complaints accumulated, and I really did enjoy the portrait McCall drew of a family that straddles cultures and borders, and the way McCall fearlessly combined the elements of her stories into a new thing that is all its own.
( I wanted to like this book more than I did. )