I HONESTLY THOUGHT THIS WAS GOING TO BE A STARGATE FAN FICTION
You might think that a book with a cover like this:
would not inspire such a thought. Clearly, my line of reasoning is nonsense, but when the author so closely resembles the departed Don S. Davis, I get my hopes up.
 |
| Don S Davis |
 |
| Oscar Hijuelos, I am disappoint. |
SHOW DON'T TELL
For a book written in the first person, Hijuelos does lots of showing. For example, I didn't figure out that this book was set in the 1970s until after page 100. He showed me, but I wasn't looking. Shame on me.
Rico, our hero, is a Cuban boy living in a rough Hispanic neighborhood in NYC, but there's one problem: he looks like a gringo. White skin, dirty blond hair. So right away, we're shown that Rico doesn't fit in anywhere. Add fuel: he spent much of his childhood hospitalized and didn't grow up with a core group of friends. I feel I've been shown too much. Take it away, Rico, it's HIDEOUS.
So Rico takes us through his pasy, his family, his hobbies, his daily life, and it's no mystery why he hitchhikes to rural Wisconsin to find a friend who won the lottery and moved there to start a farm. Because the first thought in anyone's mind when they win $75,000 is, "I want to live where it smells like cow poop."
Anyway, through hard work, socialization, lots of beer drinking, and saving a friend from drug addiction, Rico learns a lot about life, love, and fitting in. Good for him. Kid needed it.
OKAY, NOW STOP
Perhaps I'm growing jaded by YA, but the plot structure was just too rigidly predictable, as is much of the standard symbolism and the "wave a classic book into the story to get kids to read it" trend, of which John Green is the most notorious offender. This time, it's Huck Finn. Rico compares his own hitchhiking adventure with his junkie pal Jimmy to Huck and Jim's float down the Mississippi. Ugh, really. Jimmy and Jim. Write their names on an iron skillet and smash my face in with it, because I DIDN'T SEE THE PARALLELS. But wait, there's MORE. JIMMY is a SLAVE to DRUGS. It all makes sense now. Then, THEN! Rico develops the idea for a comic book about a guy who can change his skin tone to be Caucasian or Hispanic at will. While the symbolism is so laughably overt, it does demonstrate the depths of Rico's loneliness and feelings as an outsider.
So, not a read to avoid, but it is long. I will soon read We Were Here, which is of a similar bent, and I'll probably be better prepared to discuss identity among Latino boys in the United States.
NEXT TIME, I YELL ABOUT
The works of John Green. I'm struggling with my own assessment of his writing. He's worshiped as the voice of the 21st Century YA but there's something askew, and I just can't find it. Let's just say I might find fault...IN OUR STARS!
BORING STUFF
Oscar Hijuelos
2009 Atheneum
No comments:
Post a Comment