Happy Families

August 4, 2008
This collection by celebrated Mexican author Fuentes (The Eagle’s Throne
) treks a wide swath of Mexican history, encompassing revolutions won and brutally suppressed, evolving sexual mores and economic upheaval. While all kinds of relationships are explored—lovers and friends, mothers and daughters, sisters and brothers—the most revealing of Fuentes’s work are father-son stories. In “The Disobedient Son,” a father demands that his sons become priests to honor their dead mother; “The Official Family” posits a fictional president of Mexico who controls fiercely his own passions by imposing limits on his wayward boy; and in “The Star’s Son,” a fading movie star takes belated responsibility for a son with a crippling disability. Interspersed with short chapters of free-form poetry that turn an unflinching eye on homelessness, sexual abuse, gangs and drugs, Fuentes’s urgent stories make clear that Mexico is too full of life and tragedy to be controlled or constrained. Desperately holding the turbulence still for a moment, Fuentes examines closely hard lives in an unforgiving place.

August 1, 2008
This highly regarded Mexican fiction writer is not known for his proficiencyor even personal interest in the short story form. But this collection of his short fiction may advancea new theory of his inclinations in that direction. These 16 stories are completely captivating and entertaining, with Fuentes superb style (exciting language that snaps with fervency) and his trademark characterizations dancing off thepage in as full of a display as in his novels. The collections title, Happy Families, is, in some instances, accurate asto what transpires(in The Gay Divorc'e, a gay couple understands the inherent danger in infidelity) and, in other instances, is intended to be ironic (in A Cousin without Charm, a very handsome man has an affair with his beautiful wifes homely cousin, as sort of a perversion). A Family like Any Other depicts the clashes, the attempted clashes, and the inevitability of clashes that all friendships, by definition, represent. The Disobedient Son, as the title indicates, explores a sons troubled relationship with his father. A book to enliven all short story collections.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)