Night at the Fiestas

January 5, 2015
All the characters in Quade’s auspicious debut collection of 10 stories live in New Mexico, but it’s a tribute to her artistry that each story feels vivid and new. Quade’s ability to depict an entire world within the limitations of a single story, and to produce a collection with both unity and breadth, is reminiscent of Alice Munro. In the title story, a restless girl named Frances, on the brink of adolescence, looks beyond her small world—her father is a bus driver taking revelers to an annual celebration, and her older cousin Nancy wants only to drink and flirt. The opening story, “Nemecia,” also involves an older female cousin, the title character, whom the narrator views with a complex mix of awe, jealousy, and fear. “The Guesthouse” brings a contentious family together on the occasion of a grandmother’s funeral. In “Ordinary Sins,” pregnant Crystal has tumultuous and layered relationships with a pair of priests. The final story, “The Manzanos,” which focuses on grief through the eyes and mind of a young girl, is an emotional tour de force. Agent: Denise Shannon, Denise Shannon Literary Agency.

March 15, 2015

Last fall, the National Book Foundation chose former Stegner fellow Quade as one of its Five Under 35 authors, and rightly so, as this first collection demonstrates. In language that's fluid, forthright, and emotionally bracing, she comes up with stories that surprise every time. All the stories are set in New Mexico and feature characters in doubt and in betrayal. In the title piece, a somewhat mousy teenage girl travels to town for the big fiesta (with her embarrassingly obsequious father as bus driver), exacting an uncertain revenge after a disturbing encounter with a stranger. In "Nemecia," the narrator recalls a high-handed older cousin favored by the family when she comes to live with them after a tragedy whose real nature emerges much later. In "The Guesthouse," a dutiful son's revelatory confrontation with his sister and estranged father after his maternal grandmother's death involves a vivid tableau with rats and a very large snake. "The Five Wounds" features loser Amadeo, who commits himself to reenacting the passion of Christ in a shockingly realistic penitential drama and experiences something other than the transfiguration he expected. VERDICT A piercingly perfect debut collection from a young writer who's already arrived; highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 10/13/14.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

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