Mexico

October 17, 2016
Set in Mexico, the 12 stories in Barkan’s (Blind Speed) collection broadly explore the pervasive, violent impact of drug cartels on the country’s citizens and culture. In “The Chef and El Chapo,” a Mexico City chef prepares an entrée seasoned with human blood for an infamous drug lord. A doctor accidentally kills a narco during surgery in “The Plastic Surgeon,” and a sharpshooter reflects on his role in the death of a fellow soldier in “The Sharpshooter.” The title character of “The American Journalist” is forced to choose between safety and journalistic integrity. “Everything Else Is Going to Be Fine” features some simplistic writing on the complicated issue of homosexuality in Mexico. For a collection about such a vibrant, complex country, the writer’s reliance on generalities is disappointing (“Mexico was a place of tamales and tacos, mariachi bands and guacamole”), as if its details were sourced not from experience but from a tour guide.

Starred review from November 15, 2016
Twelve crime-tinted short stories from an American writer who lives part-time in Mexico.There's a Carver-esque quality to these painterly portraits of everyday people living in and around Mexico City. Barkan (Before Hiroshima: The Confession of Murayama Kazuo and Other Stories, 2011, etc.) brings a journalist's eye to his stories and lends each of his primary characters a believable sympathy and often a life-changing moment. Despite the inherent compassion in many of these stories, there's also an underpinning of violence from Mexico's ongoing drug war that gives them a very unsettled air. In the opener, "The Chef and El Chapo," a highly trained chef is faced with the unenviable task of making a delicious dish for the infamous head of the Sinaloa Cartel--using only two ingredients. Desperate to save a restaurant full of potential victims from harm, the chef dishes up slices of Wagyu beef seasoned with a child's blood. In "The God of Common Names," a Jewish schoolteacher tries to protect a star-crossed romance between two of his students and learns a hard lesson about faith and redemption. In "I Want to Live," an angry cancer patient confronts a famous and beautiful woman about her scars. Sometimes the violence in these stories is casual, as related by the narrator of "Acapulco," who blithely tells a tale of nightclubbing that ends in an execution. Yet in the very next story, "The Kidnapping," the violence is visceral and ugly and very real. "The cry from that woman, there was no faking there," says the narrator. "They take a pair of kitchen shears. They run it up along the skin. They scrape your knuckles with the edge of the blade of the scissors, until they bleed. I know how they do it, 'cause later they took one of my fingers off and sent it to my family. This is what they do." Masterful stories that peel away at the thin border between everyday life and profane violence in modern-day Mexico.

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November 1, 2016
Award-winning Barkan's (Blind Speed, 2008) stories are set in a Mexico beset by drug violence, and most are narrated by expats from the U.S. who are mostly professional people living in Mexico City's prosperous neighborhoods. From a free-spirited artist to a nurse confronting the prospect of a double mastectomy, they have few ties and are therefore living independent lives and skirting commitment. Although these first-person narrations feel immediate and tense, Barkan's characters tell their stories with a detached and matter-of-fact tone. In each story, the protagonist encounters violence in the guise of gangsters, crime lords, and thugs. Each criminal functions as a sort of existential deus ex machina by waking the narrators up to the wonder of the universe and even their own lives. Each story ends with the promise of gratification and closure as violence prompts characters to change their selfish ways. Barkan's stories would satisfy like neat shots of tequila if not for the lingering little worm he leaves wriggling at the bottom of the glass, a reminder of the usual consequence of good intentions.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2016

What do you do when a drug lord walks into your restaurant? Or when a parent walks into your classroom and threatens to kill you if his son falls for the wrong girl? Propulsive stories from Barkan, winner of a Lightship International Short Story Prize and a finalist for Grace Paley, Paterson, and Juniper fiction honors.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2016

A winner of the Lightship International Short Story Prize and other short fiction honors, Barkan turns in a near-perfect debut collection that's addictive, delicious, and confounding in its knife-edge ride through the hard lives of its characters. Set in a vividly depicted Mexico, where Barkan lives part-time with his Mexican painter wife, it opens with a chef who must think fast to create the perfect meal--and save the lives of his customers--when a notorious narco walks into his restaurant. The teacher who's told he'll be killed if he allows two students to continue their affair; the plastic surgeon who knows that by altering a notorious gangster's face, he's freeing the man to kill again; the elderly painter who needs a street tough to point out the damage he's done to his own family--all must recognize that they're in the power of others and ultimately face impossible choices. VERDICT Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 7/11/16.]

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2016

A winner of the Lightship International Short Story Prize and other short fiction honors, Barkan turns in a near-perfect debut collection that's addictive, delicious, and confounding in its knife-edge ride through the hard lives of its characters. Set in a vividly depicted Mexico, where Barkan lives part-time with his Mexican painter wife, it opens with a chef who must think fast to create the perfect meal--and save the lives of his customers--when a notorious narco walks into his restaurant. The teacher who's told he'll be killed if he allows two students to continue their affair; the plastic surgeon who knows that by altering a notorious gangster's face, he's freeing the man to kill again; the elderly painter who needs a street tough to point out the damage he's done to his own family--all must recognize that they're in the power of others and ultimately face impossible choices. VERDICT Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 7/11/16.]

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.