Review by Booklist Review
Carlotta Mercedes, a "forty mmmhmm" year-old Black Colombian trans woman serving a 20-year sentence in a men's prison in Ithaca for a crime committed when she was "Dustin Chambers," has won her fifth try at parole. Loosed on her home town of Brooklyn, she will spend a head-spinning Fourth of July weekend attempting to reconnect with her Alzheimer's-afflicted mother, her obese recluse brother, and her estranged born-again son; all while flailing through job interviews and disastrous flirtations and avoiding her parole officer. Carlotta is ambivalent about leaving: the years of prison rape and draconian control "meant that she was cared for. Not cared about, mind you. But for Carlotta, life inside had started to mean that people knew she existed." Outside, she marvels at the simple pleasure of being able to leave a room whenever she wishes and never takes her liberty for granted the way screen-tethered New Yorkers do. Carlotta's journey from Ithaca, carrying her talisman, antagonizing a one-eyed man, and plunging into a drug-induced fever dream while seeking a lost son, echoes another linguistically brilliant novel, James Joyce's Ulysses. Yet Hannaham (Pilot Imposter, 2021), winner of the PEN/Faulkner and Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Delicious Foods (2015), has created a gloriously original character with an unmistakable voice and an unforgettable story.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
PEN/Faulkner award winner Hannaham (Delicious Foods) returns with a timely if sometimes frustrating depiction of life on the edges of America's prison-industrial complex. Carlotta Mercedes comes home to Brooklyn after serving more than 20 years in prison for armed robbery. Carlotta, a Black and Colombian trans woman who was abused in prison, is a live wire, by turns self-pitying, angry, thoughtful, and raunchily funny. Carlotta's series of antic encounters with family members, her parole officer, and old friends from the neighborhood doesn't amount to much of a story, but it gives plenty of opportunities for Carlotta to riff and grouse. Late in the book, after she's robbed of $500 she'd tucked in her underwear next to what she calls her Señora Problema, Carlotta imagines the thief trying to spend the money at a department store: "I'm sorry, Sir, this money reeks a pussy. Bloomingdale policy be that we don't assept no kinda pussystank moneys." She has plenty of wit and verve, and readers are sure to cheer on Carlotta's doomed efforts to stay clean and out of trouble, but, even so, the underplotted chronicle tends to lag. It's fun for a while, but it's not the author's best. Agent: Doug Stewart, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Hannaham's (Delicious Foods) latest opens as Carlotta Mercedes is granted parole after 20 years in a men's prison. In short, a trans woman transitions from incarceration to release just in time for the Fourth of July weekend in the now unfamiliar Brooklyn neighborhood of her youth. Carlotta wants to reconcile with her son and reacquaint herself with her family, all while not violating the conditions of her parole. Her homecoming is a chaotic mess, but she faces each situation with optimism and figures her way through it. Dual readers Flame Monroe and Hannaham make the shifting voice and perspectives easy to follow. Hannaham is the star of the show, voicing Carlotta as a resilient, energetic delight who holds surprisingly few grudges after years of abuse while serving time for a crime she did not commit, knowing that it will take everything she's got to maintain her freedom. Listeners are privy not only to what she says, but also to what she thinks. VERDICT This masterpiece of absurdist humor uses the narration to elevate the text and is highly recommended for public library collections.--Christa Van Herreweghe
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A trans woman returns home after spending half her life in a men's prison. She has a lot to say. The title character of Hannaham's superb third novel is a Black Colombian woman who's just been paroled after spending nearly 22 years in prison. She was an accomplice in her cousin's robbery of a Brooklyn liquor store that led to a shopkeeper's murder; she transitioned during her incarceration, leading to routine abuses by inmates and correctional officers, including serial rape in solitary confinement. Upon her release, though, her demeanor is undefeated and stubbornly irrepressible: Hannaham often starts paragraphs with omniscient third-person descriptions followed by abrupt, unpunctuated interruptions by Carlotta. ("Carlotta turned on her heel and rushed back to the subway Yo this shit's too much a too much!") It's an effective rhetorical technique, showing her urge to take control of the narrative while counteracting the kinds of "official" narratives that get the story wrong about women like her. It also simply makes Carlotta's story engrossing reading. Carlotta's travels through Fort Greene, Brooklyn, during the day or so the novel tracks are only moderately eventful--finding her parole officer, applying for a job, visiting family, attempting to drive a car, attending a wake--but all of it is enlivened with her commentary. Much of her sass is a survival instinct--eventually we learn just how traumatized she is, and she's enduring what proves to be a difficult reentry into society. In parts the book reads like a time-travel story, as Carlotta observes changes in technology, manners, and her old stomping grounds. And in its day-in-the-life framing, hyperlocality, and rhetorical invention, it's also an homage to Ulysses, whose ending is flagrantly echoed here. Carlotta deserves a lot of things society rarely provides to women like her--among them, a role in great fiction. Hannaham gives Carlotta her due. A brash, ambitious novel carried by an unforgettable narrator. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
