The Last Flight of José Luis Balboa

July 10, 2006
A lightly sparring debut collection of nine stories by Floridian Barr delves into the Hispanic community of Miami. "Braulio Wants His Car Back" pits the loyalty of two men who journeyed from Cuba on a raft together against their edgy relationship to American capitalism. In "Faith," a TV news anchor grapples with a potentially substantial story about a woman claiming to have seen the Virgin Mary, while all the while a hurricane bears down angrily on the city as if in divine retribution. "Melancholy Guide Through the Country of Want" is a strange, sad tale of two very wealthy neighbors—a solitary bachelor with aristocratic Caribbean roots and a lonely young wife with a restraining order against her husband—whose relationship proves a valiant but doomed attempt to cancel the violence contained within each other's respective histories. The title story, appearing last in this uneven collection, is made up of diverse voices in South Beach, high brow and low, that collide tragically on the beach with the suicide ride of an ultralight glider. Barr demonstrates fine storytelling with a good ear for nuance in this year's Bread Loaf Bakeless Prize winner, introduced by Francine Prose.