Like Son

February 5, 2007
Chaos and fate are hopelessly intertwined in this exuberant second novel from Lemus (Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties
). Frank Cruz—born as a girl named Francisca, but living and identifying as a man—is a loner from Southern California. His father, diagnosed with terminal cancer, offers Frank tragic stories of the Cruz family, a key to a safe deposit box and an arresting 1924 photograph of a beautiful woman named Nahui Olin, a bohemian Mexican artist/poet from an aristocratic background. Frank (who narrates) learns that Nahui had many lovers, lived transgressively and was endlessly wooed. When his father dies, Frank sets off for New York and lands in the East Village, where he meets and falls in love with Nathalie; she eerily reminds him of Nahui, whose face and history have now obsessed him. Their relationship is solid until the horror of September 11 throws them into chaos and sadness that tests their relationship, and Frank's self-image. With her blunt prose, Lemus doesn't waste a word in this smart, never sentimental identity novel.

April 15, 2007
Gender issues, a dying father, the prospect of inherited blindness, tragic family historyall this in just the first chapter of Lemus's new work. Lemus ("Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties") follows the fortunes of a young Mexican American, born Francisca and now living as Frank, as he struggles with identity, love, and family ties. The story lurches between Frank's current life in New York City (including the inevitable 9/11 references), an upbringing in L.A. with inadequate parents, and the unlikely history of Frank's grandmother, a poor Mexican servant lusted after by a wealthy Bohemian woman writer (the very real Nahui Olin, born Carmen Mondragó n, a Mexican artist and feminist). The narrative tries for a hip outsider sensibility but is hampered by awkward dialog: "'Bring that yummy creature with you, ' he purred"; "It was her. She was the One." The author's work will perhaps speak to hip, young, bicoastal lesbians, but it is unlikely to reach a broader audience.Laurie Sullivan, Sage Group Int'l, Nashville

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2007
When her dying father calls, ending years of silence, Felicia has become Frank, breasts tightly bound beneath layers of shirts. Caring for him emotionally frees the twentysomething to leave California for New York, which answers a nostalgic love for a romanticized past symbolized for Frank by an Edward Weston photo of a stunning woman ("serious dynamite"), a Bohemian poet self-named Nahui Olin, who once publicly lusted for Frank's father's mother. Frank meets a present-day embodiment of Nahui in the tempestuous Nathalie, who promptly claims the right side of our smitten protagonist's bed as hers. If Nat's unpredictability and drama are endearing, her occasional disappearances when intimacy overwhelms her are not. But so it goes for seven generally happy years. At 30, Frank opens a shop selling collectibles, she wants a baby, and she has achieved regular if not quite normal domesticity. Lemus' powerfully written chronicle of love, in which gender is irrelevant, and the siren call of the past threatens the present, deserves more than a niche audience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)