Caramelo, or, Puro cuento : a novel /

The author's long-awaited second novel (following The House on Mango Street, 1984) is a sweeping, fictionalized history of her Mexican American family. When Celaya (or "Lala") Reyes takes a family vacation from Chicago to Mexico City, she begins a journey from girl to young adult and from the present to the past. Generous digressions trace roots and branches on the luxuriant family tree, telling the tales of ancestors, family members, and sometimes even walk-on players. The book's title refers to an unfinished, candy-colored rebozo (shawl) that comes to symbolize both the interconnectedness of all these individual histories and the author's act of weaving them together. Still, the focus is on Lala, her papa, and the Awful Grandmother, the last a truly wonderful literary creation--a despotic matriarch guaranteed to frighten young and old but whose wounds, once revealed, are a revelation. By book's end, the different threads of these three lives are snugged into a tight knot. Cisneros combines a real respect for history with a playful sense of how lies often tell the greatest truths--the characters, narrator, and author all play fast and loose with the facts. But, Lala learns, the ability to write your own history also means you must take special care in choosing your fate. The author's gorgeous prose, on-a-dime turns of phrase, and sumptuous scene-setting make this an unforgettable read. --Keir Graff

With the ability to make listeners laugh out loud with her humor, get lumps in their throats with her poignancy and leave them thinking about her characters long after they've hit the stop button, Cisneros is a master storyteller and performer. Her sweeping tale of the Reyes family, with the charmingly innocent Lala Reyes at its center, moves from 1920s Mexico City and Acapulco to 1950s Chicago, all the while grounding the family's whimsical events with "notes" to help readers understand the greater significance of, say, a nightclub singer who snagged Lala's grandfather's heart or the Mexican government's initiative to build a network of highways throughout the country. Cisneros (The House on Mango Street) reads her flowing text in an often ebullient voice, recounting the sights and sounds of Mexico City's boisterous streets or performing one of the many grand-scale arguments Lala's parents have. Her voices are marvelous. She perfectly portrays the Awful Grandmother's bitterness (the old lady loved to remind her son, "Wives come and go, but mothers, you have only one!") and sweetly croons the birthday songs Lala and her brothers sing to their father. This is a treat of an audio, combining a fantastic narrative with an equally excellent reading. Based on the Knopf hardcover (Forecasts, Aug. 12, 2002). (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Raucous, spirited, and brimming with energy, Cisneros's latest is less a novel than a landscape. Readers are carried along with Lala Reyes's family as they routinely motor between Chicago and Mexico to visit the Little Grandfather and the Awful Grandmother. Joining them on this journey are the families of Uncle Fat-Face and Uncle Baby, and it's no surprise that along the way painful secrets emerge, sibling rivalries flare up, and the Americanized children find themselves in a head-on cultural clash with the Awful Grandmother. The text is deftly shot through with references to Mexican and American popular culture, and with all the comings and goings this work could have felt as lumpy as someone's first try at knitting. But Cisneros has the talent to render a narrative as beautifully blended as the fabric in the caramelo, the singular striped shawl Lala inherits from her grandmother, descendant of a renowned shawl-making family. Those who remember the pointillist prose of Woman Hollering Creek will be impressed to see that Cisneros knows how to travel. Important for all libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/02; for an interview with Cisneros, see p. 90.-Ed.]-Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal" (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Adult/High School-A rich family tale, based on Cisneros's own childhood. Although lengthy, the book will appeal to many teens, particularly girls, because of its compelling coming-of-age theme and its array of eccentric, romantic characters. Celaya Reyes, called LaLa, is the youngest and the only girl among seven siblings. The book follows her from infancy to adolescence as she grows up in a noisy, disputatious, and loving clan of Mexican Americans struggling to be successful in the United States while remaining true to their cultural heritage. The Reyes's annual car journey from Chicago to Mexico City for a visit with the matriarch known as "The Awful Grandmother" is both a trial and a treat for LaLa. The imaginative and sensitive girl often feels lost within the family hilarity and histrionics, but she gradually forms an uneasy bond with her grandmother, inheriting from her the family stories, legends, and scandals. Eventually LaLa fashions these into a weave of "healthy lies" that chronicles the movements and adventures, both factual and imaginary, of several lively generations above and below the border. Her telling is a skillful blending of many narrative threads, creating a whole as colorful and charming as the heirloom striped shawl that gives the novel its title.-Starr E. Smith, Fairfax County Public Library, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A sprawling family saga with a zesty Mexican-American accent from Cisneros, author of, most recently, Woman Hollering Creek (1991). Every summer, all three Reyes brothers drive with their wives and children from Chicago to Mexico City to visit their parents. Narrator Lala begins with a particularly dreadful trip during which "the Awful Grandmother" reveals a shameful secret from her favorite son's past to humiliate her detested daughter-in-law. These are Lala's parents, and Lala then rolls the narrative back, goaded by a scolding second voice whose identity we learn later, to tell us how a desolate, abandoned girl named Soledad became the Awful Grandmother. Soledad comes from a family of shawl-makers, and her most significant possession is a rebozo caramelo, a silk shawl whose striped design, when she unfurls it after her husband's death, evokes "the past . . . the days to come. All swirling together like the stripes." Wearing it years later to her parents' 30th anniversary, Lala brings the fringe to her lips and tastes "cooked pumpkin familiar and comforting and good, reminding me I'm connected to so many people, so many." Cisneros' keen eye enlivens descriptions of everything from Chicago's famed Maxwell Street flea market to Soledad's sun-stroked house on Destiny Street. (The author riffs playfully throughout on the double meaning of destino, as either "destiny" or "destination"; it's hard to imagine that the simultaneous Spanish-language edition will be as stylistically original as this casually bilingual text.) Melodrama abounds, and the narrator doesn't disdain her tale's links to Mexico's famed telenovelas. In one of many entertaining footnotes, vehicles for historical and biographical background as well as the author's opinions, she insists that those TV soap operas merely "[emulat] Mexican life." The only way to cope is with a robust sense of humor. As Lala's friend Viva says, "You're the author of the telenovela of your life. Comedy or tragedy? Choose." Readers here get both: "Life was cruel. And hilarious all at once." First printing of 150,000