Ana Castillo

Ana Castillo is one of those writers I count on for engaging reading material. She has a knack for shining light on ordinary life in ways that make it bright and faceted: a combination of significant details that might not be captured by less adept writers.

The stories in Doña Cleanwell Leaves Home take place in Chicago, New Mexico, and Mexico City and contain overlapping characters. The overlap isn't enough to make this book a novel-in-stories, but it does allow opportunities to view individual people and situations from multiple perspectives. Doña Cleanwell examines the lives of Latinx families under stress—sometimes generational differences, sometimes a lack of trust within a marriage, sometimes gender tensions. These stories don't offer sweeping narrative arcs, but the small, detailed portraits they offer are fascinating, particularly when viewed in relation to one another.

If you enjoy writing about families, Latinx fiction, and/or short stories, this is a book you'll want to read—and will probably race through, as was my experience. Once I began reading I didn't put it down until I came to the final page.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.… (more)

Ana Castillo's voice pulled me through this novel--the humor and conversational tone is evident throughout. I thought it was going to be lighthearted when I started reading it, but it quickly became apparent that was not the case. It was hard to get a bead on this. I was kind of repulsed by the infatuation with her not actual cousin; I couldn't make sense of how the rapes were handled (or weren't); and I found much of the rest of the frequent, often graphic sex to be joyless, even when maybe it wasn't supposed to appear so. For much of the book, I felt really sad for Palma and also wondered if she was an anti-hero. The book doesn't have much of a plot, but really in the end, it's all about getting a fuller picture of how Palma has come to be. It was a little bit of a bummer after loving So Far From God sooooo incredibly much, but at the same time, I'm really excited to read more of Castillo's work.… (more)