Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Díaz's textured debut novel (after the memoir Ordinary Girls) finds a mother and daughter struggling to live on their own terms in Puerto Rico. In the prologue, set in 1993, a dead body is discovered in the island's cane fields after a devastating fire. Díaz then rewinds to tell the story of protagonist Maricarmen, whose family was forced to move into a public housing project called el Caserío. At 16 in 1975, she spends her summer cleaning houses and babysitting. One of her clients, Doña Iris, is dying of cancer and asks Maricarmen to help care for her baby, Tito. Through this connection, Maricarmen gets to know Doña Iris's older son, known as Rey el Cantante, a gifted singer and petty thief beloved by el Caserío's residents and reviled by the police for sharing his bounty with his neighbors. Maricarmen and Rey fall in love, but because Rey's skin is darker, Maricarmen's mother kicks her out. She then drops out of school and marries Rey, who's often high on drugs, and they have a daughter, Nena. As the story unfolds, revealing the identity of the victim from the fire and chronicling Nena's difficult coming-of-age as a young queer woman, Díaz offers a complex view of el Caserío and the residents' shifting allegiances. It's a moving family drama. Agent: Michelle Brower, Trellis Literary Management. (Oct.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Tragedy shapes and reshapes the lives of a mother and daughter living in Puerto Rico. Spanning decades, Díaz's moving debut novel follows Maricarmen, a young working-class woman, as she grows up, falls in love, becomes a mother, and faces tragedy after tragedy in el Caserío, a close-knit barrio in Puerto Rico. Living with her controlling mother and beloved sister in one of the barrio's only white families, Maricarmen is the model daughter until she turns 17 and falls in love with Rey el Cantante, a Black boy from the neighborhood. When her prejudiced mother discovers their relationship, she kicks her out. As Maricarmen deals with a surprise pregnancy and becomes the matriarch of her new family, Rey wears many hats: talented musician, loyal friend, drug addict, vigilante, father, husband, fugitive. He's beloved for always finding ways to take care of his neighborhood even though his methods are morally gray. Meanwhile, Maricarmen takes care of their infant daughter, Nena, and Rey's 3-year-old brother, Tito, while also waiting for Rey to resurface only for him to disappear again. Fifteen years later, when another shocking act of violence upends their lives, Maricarmen and Nena struggle not to let their grief swallow them whole. As Nena comes to terms with her sexual identity and her place in the barrio, Maricarmen makes a decision that changes their relationship forever. Set against the background of the AIDS epidemic, the novel explores queerness, cultural homophobia, and interpersonal and political violence with heartbreaking accuracy. There's a particularly poignant moment when Nena, surrounded by her queer found family, hears one of her father's favorite songs: "Nena imagined that it had reminded him that he was beautiful, that to look out at the world and see Black people looking back at him was to understand what real beauty was." Díaz writes beautifully about grief, identity, addiction, family, and the blurry line between myth, truth, and history. A sweeping and touching debut about love, generational trauma, and complex mother-daughter relationships. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
