This story completely devoured me, down to the bone, squeaky clean, with its big unhinged jaw. It is laden with grief, visceral yet tender, sweet and painful. Bizarre and surreal, but portrays the tangible experience of love so perfectly. This book feels like a small and strange creature that you will love unconditionally, no matter how absurd – you can’t help it.
I never thought I would describe something as One Hundred Years of Solitude meets The Royal Tenenbaums - if both those creators watched Suspiria and Night of the Living Dead back-to-back during a popcorn-heavy slumber party. But then I dove into Candelaria and was met with all my favorite influences, along with the voice of someone entirely beautiful and unique to the genre.
To call this collection of essays a challenge to the status quo wouldn't get my full point across - Myriam Gurba actively kicks back with an unforgiving ferocity, delivering blows to rape culture, colonialism, familial machismo, and the deifying of Joan Didion as the queen of a (stolen) California.
I hate scary things. I don't get why one would choose to feel fear. But this little book got me. I was mesmerized by the discomfort these stories brought me, in small doses and somehow overwhelmingly. She leans into the eeriness of the everyday and the miniscule uncanniness that lingers in her juicy and transfixing prose. Dávila may have made me less fearful and hesitant of being afraid.
Who knew art forgery was so dark and dangerous??! A fun ride that you never want to end. Perfect beach read IMO!
In this memoir, Ingrid Rojas Contreras examines the violence that has impacted her family since the Spanish invasion of pre-colonial Colombia, and the perseverance of her indigenous heritage in the magical practices that have been carried through the (male) generations. Meditations on memory, trauma, beliefs, and history are both lyrical and thought-provoking, especially when Rojas Contreras laser focuses on her relationship with her mercurial mother and their mirror-image experiences with amnesia and supernatural experiences.
Written as a novel in verse, our main character brings Selena back from the dead to fill the hole in her life that isn't being filled by romance. Beautiful hybrid of poetry and prose brimming with personality that will actually make you laugh out loud and tear you up. Will definitely be one I'll read over and over again!
Its only March but this may just be the best book I've read in 2022! A beautiful novel about coming home, confronting the past, and embracing the future. This book put me in ALL MY FEELS and I havent been the same since.
An unfiltered account of addiction that does not glamorize the disease of addiction. Some of the best writing I've read in a long time.
This is a novel in verse that tells the story of a young woman who decides to being back the singer Selena from the dead. But it's so much more than that. It's about loneliness, feminism, the culture behind fandom and queer/latinidad identity. TOP TEN BOOK 2021 OF FOR ME!
