A Handbook to Luck

A Handbook To Luck, by Christina Garcia, is a lovely novel about the bittersweet roles that luck, coincidence, happenstance, and choice play in our lives.

It’s a very short novel that feels more like three intertwining novellas. The stories unfold chronologically as we follow three separate protagonists—Enrique Florit, the mathematically gifted Cuban-American son of a flamboyant professional magician; Marta Claros, a child of abject poverty from the slums of San Salvador; and Leila Rezvani, a wealthy and privileged daughter of an Iranian surgeon and his vain Russian wife. We watch their lives in brief snapshots from 1968 through 1987. We learn about the sorrows, joys, difficult decisions, and everyday pleasures that mark their show more existence as each struggles to build a decent and happy life. The character’s lives cross paths in unexpected ways. Luck comes in many guises. Sometimes the characters recognize their good fortune and seize the moment, but at other times they are totally unaware of these golden opportunities and let them slip away. This is a book about choices, about the paths taken and not taken in our lives.

The author, Christina Garcia, is a 48-year-old Cuban-American who studied political science and international relations at Barnard and Johns Hopkins before starting work as a journalist for Time magazine. Eventually, she turned her attention to writing poetry and novels. This work is her fifth novel. According to a newspaper interview about the book (Charleston, Sunday Gazette, July 22, 2007), the author recently took up painting and is making an artist studio for herself in her Napa Valley, California, home. I wasn’t the least bit surprised when I read this. Garcia’s prose is filled with subtle lyrical nuance and vivid imagery—exactly what I’d expect from a writer who is also a poet and a painter. For me, reading her prose was what I enjoyed most about this short, wise, and emotionally layered work.

This novel takes a large philosophical view on life, and it will probably cause readers to reminisce about their own lives and missed opportunities. The book gets only a three-and-a-half star rating from me primarily because I felt a bit let down by the end—I wanted more from the plot and the character’s lives. But, the book is a beautiful, well-written story, and I recommend it. Don’t hesitate to read it if you want a short, contemplative book that is as easy and quick to read, as it is beautiful and meaningful. show less

I really liked this book. The characters were interesting - although flawed and not well suited to care for his son, I found the magician to be very likable. His love for his son was palpable, and his struggle to maintain his career took many interesting turns. The other characters also felt very real to me, and their intersections seemed plausible. Not always happy, but that seemed authentic. Garcia writes with such detail, and the characters and settings really came alive for me. There was a lot of symbolism, and a deeper level of meaning, for which I would appreciate a second reading.

Enrique, Marta, and Leila are three young adult immigrants to the U.S. coming of age in the mid-1970s. They live at the margins; Enrique because his father's itinerant career as a magician keeps him and his son on the brink of poverty; Leila because her family is not sure whether to leave Iran, which is about to depose the Shah and usher in something that will disrupt their privileged, westernized lives; and Marta, fleeing an abusive husband and the turmoil of the coming civil war in El Salvador.

Enrique is the locus, as he'll cross paths with Leila, who briefly becomes his lover and who he pines after for the rest of his life. Marta becomes his maid after he becomes a semi-wealthy Los Angeles businessman. I'm not sure why Garcia did not show more orchestrate some kind of connection and encounter between Marta and Leila; each chapter is named for one of the three characters, and in a locked room novel like this it seems like all three should have crossed paths with each other.

Marta and Leila witness and survive some pretty harsh incidents in their countries before landing in the U.S. Garcia's writing doesn't ring exciting in these passages. Chronicling the atrocities of the "White Hand" death squads in El Salvador or the brutal manhandling of the post-Shah religious police ought not to come off as bland.

She does a good job evoking the zeitgeist of the mid-to-late 1970s to early 1980s in the post-Watergate, pre-AIDS and PC United States, the brutal political landscape of Central America, and the cataclysm about to shake Iran. Material like this should drip with passion. show less

It's been over 3 years since I read this book. I don't remember there being much luck in this book, at least not good luck. I suppose it could be a handbook to bad luck.

It wasn't as good as I was expecting it to be. And it was a rather sad tale and things didn't wrap up as I expected.

Cristina Garcia created some very interesting characters. I was not completely caring what happened to all of them.

This was a really relaxing book to read. At times I felt like it wasn't going anywhere, but it was, just in an unexpected direction.