Peel My Love Like an Onion : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Peeled onion: more than just a root vegetable
Review: From beginning to end, Carmen "La Coja" (the cripple) is a woman who is as loveable and insecure as your best friend. The author's skillful dialog is some of the best I've ever read. The wry humor and tongue-in-cheek observations made me laugh out loud. Carmen's mother who shouts on the phone when she talks long distance reminded me of my own mom. Carmen's mother has lived a hard working life, and now in her later years, God help the person who comes between her and her afternoon novelas.

Carmen fully plunges her passionate spirit into her lovers and into her dance. Polio and lack of education color her life, as does her beauty. The book plays the extremes: ecstacy and despair, devotion and revenge, health and illness, discipline and abandonment, Gypsy, Mexicana and Gringa.

The novel is deliciously laced with Gypsy music and folklore, Mexican family life, love, cooking, lovers, and of course dance. Like Hemmingway in "The Old Man and the Sea," the author uses a light, simple touch, natural dialog, and understated, narrative. It's a book to bring to bed... unless of course your lover is waiting.

Rating:
Summary: Sleepless in Seattle
Review: Many years ago I remember reading an interview with Los Lobos, a group I have enjoyed for their diversity in music regardless of being labeled as a Chicano East L.A. Garage Band, where they were asked about their success with "La Bamba". They said they could have gone on recording pop hits cowtowing to the gringo public but have always enjoyed doing what they like to do best, playing music. Castillo's last novel came to mind with this recollection. She has never cowtowed to anyone but writes from the heart, from the gut. A truly complex and stylized writer. I have read her four novels, the first, The Mixquiahuala Letter was required reading when I was an undergrad. I read the rest on my own. All we went to know is when is she moving to Seattle so she can base one of her marvelous novels here!

Rating:
Summary: A Healing Book.
Review: My son gave me this book last year. Actually, he gave me the Spanish version, Carmen la Coja, which he picked up after spending a year in Spain and wanting to keep up with his Spanish. He is second generation madrileno growing up in New York. Our other connection with this book is that I suffered from polio as a child in Madrid. My parents moved to the United States when I recovered with my bout of illness in hopes of my getting better treatment here. This is not to review my life but Carmen la Coja's--brave, fierce and in touch (finally) with herself, with no advantages whatsoever. As I read, I asked myself, What would I have done if I had had such an insensitive mother as Carmen? What would I have done if I had no way to make my living but by my own wits and with the illness I personally knew and understood? Despite the many adjustments I had to make here in the States, I came to understand how fortunate I was all along. It is a courageous testimony to woman's strength. I am in the medical profession and I have recommended this book to many patients and colleagues. They have all thanked me for it later.