Word: realism
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Oscar Hijuelos is going to be a taking a lot of flack for his new book. The Fourteen Sisters of Emubo Members O'Brien. Readers expecting another gritty, melancholy and macho novel like. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love will be disappointed. Instead of the brutal realism of Mambo Kings, Fourteen Sisters is Latin American magical realism successfully transplanted to the United States. Where Mambo Kings depicted a world of men. Fourteen Sisters celebrates femininity, "the female principle of life, the nurturing things," as Hijuelos stated in a recent New York magazine interview...
...because the Montez O'Brten house exudes so much femininity that the pilot is overcome and the engine malfunctions; later, the ghost of Nelson's sister returns to watch him make love to Mariels. American readers can swallow these events when they're set in Macondo and Aracatacas; magical realism has been relegated to the level of quaint events in imaginary south of the-border villages. Fourteen Sisters challenges us to believe that magical realism can take place even in the practical, level-headed United States of America. This is what makes Hijuelos' novel so magnificent...
...first novel, Like Water for Chocolate, Mexican screenwriter Laura Esquivel brought Gabriel Garcia Marquez's brand of magic realism into the kitchen and the bedroom, the Latin woman's traditional castle and dungeon. The film version was written by Esquivel and directed by her husband Alfonso Arau, known to U.S. audiences for his performances in funky-flaky westerns. In The Wild Bunch he played a punk gunslinger and in Three Amigos! the malefic El Guapo, who spits out the immortal line "A plethora of pinatas...
...idea of higher taxes for gasoline. At the Democratic Convention, he told delegates that his vision of the New Covenant meant "an America in which middle-class incomes -- not middle-class taxes -- are going up." Toward the end of the campaign he did introduce a new note of realism, if not austerity. At 3 a.m. on Election Day, he told a crowd in Albuquerque: "I'm here to tell you we didn't get into this mess overnight, and we won't get out of it overnight...
Never read a line by Tabitha King? Don't care if you ever read another by her husband Stephen? Fine. But Tabitha's One on One is a surprise, a good, tough, raunchy pop novel about a couple of high school basketball stars. Its realism may be a bit rough-edged for parents, but it's about right for their older children. Sam Styles is a huge, self-apologetic, marvelously coordinated fellow who can't make a wrong move on a basketball court but struggles with dyslexia. Because his father and stepmother are loving and decent, and because a sharp...