Caramelo

i'm reading Sandra Cisneros' novel Caramelo right now. here are two passages i particularly enjoyed for their articulate and colorful illuminations of something true:

Because Uncle Old's wife had died a long time ago, his house was a house of men, and as such there was no attention to things of the spirit. No tablecloths or napkins, no flower garden growing from an empty lard tin, no stack of clean pressed linen, no pretty plates. Items were spartan, utilitarian, makeshift, thrifty, and filthy. Newspapers served as a doormat, seat cushions or tablecloth. Fotonovela pages sufficed as toilet reading and toilet paper. A bent nail on the bathroom door was the only defender of privacy. A coffee can and a galvanized tub were the bath. And so on and on. A helter-skelter, trochemoche, come-what-may, venga lo que venga style of living.

and:

[Innocencio's} first obsessions were about those things that overwhelmed and frightened him precisely because there was no language to name them. And he would seek out a quiet space and think until that smudge of emotion clarified itself. The fear and allure of the wind that set the trees and the arteries in his body trembling. The sunsets watched from the azotea when Mexico City was still smog-free and one could watch a sunset. The face of a blond, three-quarter profile, with the sun behind her and the down of her cheek ablaze.

Things like this filled him with a joy akin to sadness or a sadness akin to joy and he found himself unable to explain why he was blinking back tears with an uncontrollable desire to laugh and cry all at once. --What? --I don't know, nothing, he might've said. But that was a lie. He should have said, --Everything, everything, ah, everything!

okay, and one more:

But it's our Uncle Baby and Aunty Ninfa who live like movie stars. Their apartment smells of cigarettes and air-conditioning; ours of fried tortillas. For a long time I think of air-conditioning and cigarettes as the smell of elegance. From her hi-fi Aunty's favorite records are playing: "Exodus," "Never on Sunday," Andy Williams singing "Moon River." Everything smells like cigarettes in Aunty's house, curtains, rugs, furniture, the poodle with the pink-painted toenails, her teased beehive, even her kids. Except for the girls' bedroom, which smells like pee because Amor and Paz still wet the bed.

--Shut up, stupid.

--I'm telling. Ma, Amor told me to "shut up, stupid."

--Jesus! Will you girls shut up and let me hear my music or do i have to make you shut up!

Though their apartment itself is little, the furniture is big. Iron kitchen chairs with high backs like thrones. Bedroom sets that poke out beyond the door frames and keep the doors from shutting completely. A thick wedge of clothes on hangers behind every door. It's hard to walk. Whenever someon wants to pass, someone else has to sit down; when someone wants to open a door, someone else has to stand up. In the kitchen a life-size portrait of an Italian street beggar bending over to take a drink from a fountain. --We bought it because she looks just like our little Paz. Wall-to-wall shag carpeting covered with plastic floor runners and area rugs. A marble coffee table like a coffin lid. Speckled Venetian blown-glass knick-knacks--a rooster, a tropical fish, a swan. Onyx ashtrays....

Aunty Ninfa's apartment is so clean we don't like to visit. --Don't touch anything. Watch you don't run, you might break something. Be careful not to touch the mirrors when you switch on the bathroom light. Honey, that chair's not to sit on.

those who enjoy meticulous, thorough descriptions and details should very much enjoy Caramelo, as well as those who like epic family stories and Latin American literature. the length of Caramelo compared to her short stories and The House on Mango Street seems to weaken the impact of her powerful writing a bit, but there are still precious literary gems to be found in what has been overall a very finely told story...so far.