Caramelo

Starred review from March 3, 2003
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).

October 1, 2002
"Uncle Fat-Face's brand-new used white Cadillac, Uncle Baby's green Impala, Father's red Chevrolet station wagon" the parade of cars that ushers in Cisneros's first novel since The House on Mango Street (1984) is headed to Mexico City from Chicago, bearing three Mexican-American families on their yearly visit to Awful Grandmother and Little Grandfather. Celaya or "Lala," the youngest child of seven and the only daughter of Inocencio and Zoila Reyes, charts the family's movements back and forth across the border and through time in this sprawling, kaleidoscopic, Spanish-laced tale. The sensitive and observant Lala feels lost in the noisy shuffle, but she inherits the family stories from her grandmother, who comes from a clan of shawl makers and throughout her life has kept her mother's unfinished striped shawl, or caramelo rebozo, containing all the heartache and joy of her family. When she, and later Lala, wear the rebozo and suck on the fringes, they are reminded of where they come from, and those who came before them. In cramped and ever-changing apartments and houses, the teenaged Lala seeks time and space for self-exploration, finally coming to an understanding of herself through the prism of her grandmother. Cisneros was also the only girl in a family of seven, and this is clearly an autobiographical work. Its testaments to cross-generational trauma and rapture grow repetitive, but Cisneros's irrepressible enthusiasm, inspired riffs on any number of subjects (tortillas, telenovelas, La-Z-Boys, Woolworth's), hilarious accounts of family gatherings and pitch-perfect bilingual dialogue make this a landmark work. (Sept. 30) Forecast: Cisneros is arguably the writer who put Mexican-American culture on the map, and the appearance of her second novel after nearly 20 years (she is also the author of two poetry collections and a short story collection, Woman Hollering Creek) will be a major literary event. A 20-city author tour and an extensive ad/promo campaign should feed the fire, and a 150,000 first printing is planned. Orale!

Starred review from August 12, 2002
"Uncle Fat-Face's brand-new used white Cadillac, Uncle Baby's green Impala, Father's red Chevrolet station wagon"—the parade of cars that ushers in Cisneros's first novel since The House on Mango Street
(1984) is headed to Mexico City from Chicago, bearing three Mexican-American families on their yearly visit to Awful Grandmother and Little Grandfather. Celaya or "Lala," the youngest child of seven and the only daughter of Inocencio and Zoila Reyes, charts the family's movements back and forth across the border and through time in this sprawling, kaleidoscopic, Spanish-laced tale. The sensitive and observant Lala feels lost in the noisy shuffle, but she inherits the family stories from her grandmother, who comes from a clan of shawl makers and throughout her life has kept her mother's unfinished striped shawl, or caramelorebozo, containing all the heartache and joy of her family. When she, and later Lala, wear the rebozo
and suck on the fringes, they are reminded of where they come from, and those who came before them. In cramped and ever-changing apartments and houses, the teenaged Lala seeks time and space for self-exploration, finally coming to an understanding of herself through the prism of her grandmother. Cisneros was also the only girl in a family of seven, and this is clearly an autobiographical work. Its testaments to cross-generational trauma and rapture grow repetitive, but Cisneros's irrepressible enthusiasm, inspired riffs on any number of subjects (tortillas, telenovelas, La-Z-Boys, Woolworth's), hilarious accounts of family gatherings and pitch-perfect bilingual dialogue make this a landmark work. Published simultaneously in a Spanish-language hardcover edition ($24, ISBN 0-375-41509-2). (Sept. 30)Forecast:Cisneros is arguably the writer who put Mexican-American culture on the map, and the appearance of her second novel after nearly 20 years (she is also the author of two poetry collections and a short story collection,
Woman Hollering Creek) will be a major literary event. A 20-city author tour and an extensive ad/promo campaign should feed the fire, and a 150,000 first printing is planned.
Órale!