![]() There are the strained similes (when Lydia finds she is unable to pray, “she believes it’s a divine kindness. There is subtext announced at booming volume. There are so many instances and varieties of awkward syntax I developed a taxonomy. There is a fair amount of action in the book - chases, disguises, one thuddingly obvious betrayal - but if you’re at all sensitive to language, your eye and ear will snag on the sentences. She’s wondered with the sort of detached fascination of the comfortable elite how dire the conditions of their lives must be wherever they come from, that this is the better option.” All her life she’s pitied those poor people. And that simple fact, among all the other severe new realities of her life, knocks the breath clean out of her lungs. ![]() She decides to disguise herself and Luca as migrants and escape to America, until she realizes this is no disguise: “She and Luca are actual migrants. When Sebastián publishes an exposé, the kingpin rewards him by slaughtering his family. Of course he does everything follows as predictably as possible. This stranger turns out to be the kingpin. Her life was quiet, content and enlivened recently by a new friendship with a patron, an older man, devastatingly suave (or so we’re meant to believe), who shared her taste in books. Los Jardineros, as they call themselves, have a taste for baroque punishments and are helmed by a charismatic kingpin. ![]() ![]() Lydia’s husband, Sebastián, slain on the patio, was a reporter who once fearlessly pursued stories about the cartel, which controlled Acapulco. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |