Alicia Yánez Cossío

Around the World for a Good Book returns! This time we go to Ecuador for another Latin American novel written in the magical realist style. While not quite Gabriel Garcia Marquez, it’s much better than the atrocious Leaving Tabasco. Despite the title, there’s not much about Bruna and nothing at all about the sisters. Instead, in a disjointed fashion, it goes through the stories of several generations of Bruna’s eccentric family. Well into the book it feels like I’m reading background information and waiting for the real story to start. There’s the underlying theme well-explored of class and race and attempt to hide the Indian ancestry of the family of family even though it is public knowledge. There’s the uncle who spent his life weaving a carpet for the Pope and they end up carpeting the town after he dies. There’s the devoted aunt who hires an accountant to keep track of the souls she’s freed from purgatory through her indulgences. There’s the aunt who is never allowed to marry and thus dotes on a family of cats (who get bathed weekly in one of the book’s funnier moments). There’s one man who collects frogs and another who fills a floor of the house with matchbooks. Then there’s Bruna oppressed by the weight of her family history who flees at the end of the book. It’s not a great novel, and I have to admit I didn’t understand a lot of it, but it did have a unique voice, style and themes.… (more)