The Summer of El Pintor

June 4, 2001
Overblown writing weighs down this riches-to-rags mystery about a privileged girl forced to move to the Los Angeles barrio where her late mother grew up. Sixteen-year-old Mónica has long forgotten her Latino roots ("If my name ever had an accent, she thought, it doesn't now and I like it that way"). But when her father loses his prestigious government job, not getting the shiny new car she'd expected is "just the first of her disappointments"—she also must leave her fancy Virginia boarding school and get used to straitened circumstances. Then Mónica becomes intrigued by the disappearance of El Pintor ("the painter"), who has lived rent-free on the property by longstanding arrangement with her mother's family. The barrio, supposedly such a shock to Mónica, never takes on much personality, and most characterizations and relationships prove shallow. For example, a key clue to El Pintor's importance has to do with Mónica's mother, Cristina, who died when Mónica was four, and yet this pivotal character receives only perfunctory description ("She was as nice as she was pretty"). As she pieces together clues about El Pintor and his paintings, Mónica doesn't always seem 16, especially as she sometimes lapses into a schoolmarmish tone. Some readers may appreciate the Latino setting, while others may not care enough about these flimsy characters to unravel El Pintor's secret. Ages 11-up.