Overview
Carlos Fuentes's new novel concerns people, rich and poor, who all have something to do with the family of one Leonardo Barroso, a powerful business tycoon of Northern Mexico who successfully exploits his connections to the United States. Barroso controls the fate of strangers as well as family members, and his decisions -- whether to marry his son to his goddaughter and future mistress, whether to sponsor a young gay medical student for his studies at Cornell, or whether to fly weekend janitors to New York City to avoid American labor costs -- carry long-term effects for anyone within his web. Fuentes mingles generations and classes in this memorable novel, vividly illuminating the cultural conflict that rages between Mexico and America. In extraordinary prose, in the experience of love, of loneliness, of heartbreak and redemption, the dramas that ensue epitomize the strange, invisible, dangerous frontier that divides us.Editorials
E. Annie Proulx
Carlos Fuentes has intimate knowledge of both countries and has built an international literary reputation on that knowledge and his compassionate champoinship of the poor and oppressed. The Crystal Frontier, with its powerful writing and may fine passages, reinforces that reputation. -- Washington Post Book ReviewMiami Herald
As compelling as anything the author of The Old Gringo and Terra Nostra has given us...Unique and memorable.Jay Parini
[A]cute observation. . .a fine sense of satire.— The New York Times Book Review
La Jornada
This exuberant fiction contains and alludes to journalism, politics, economics, famous tall tales, and picaresque adventures, all united by the "vitality, variety, and narrative force that Fuentes always gives his work.Publishers Weekly -
Though subtitled "a novel in nine stories," the nine pieces that make up Fuentes's latest are a bit too fragmented to warrant that description. True, their protagonists all share some connection to Leonardo Barroso, a powerful, somewhat shady Mexican businessman, but the real common thread, a thin one, is Fuentes's interest in intersections and miscommunications between the U.S. and Mexico. The book opens strongly enough, with "A Capital Girl," a tale of a young woman who falls in love with Barroso but marries his troubled son instead. Yet the second story about a young Mexican man who discovers his homosexuality while studying medicine at Cornell at Barroso's expense, rings false in its depiction of American collegiate life. Indeed, for a book that seeks to depict the ways in which Americans misunderstand Mexicans and Mexico, there are a surprising number of stereotypes and clichs of life in the States. The most prominent offender is "Girlfriends," the heavy-handed story of a racist rich old Angla and her long-suffering Mexican servant. While the best entries here, the moving "Malintzin Las Maquilas," about the difficult friendship among three exploited female factory workers, and the title story, an offbeat tale of a Mexican window washer's encounter with an American executive, display Fuentes's rich imagination and subtle touch, too many of the characters and situations take a back seat to what are clearly didactic intentions.Library Journal
Leonardo Barroso is an unscrupulous Mexican oligarch whose fortress of a villa is only a short drive from the "crystal frontier" of the title, and each one of the nine stories comprising this work explores the life of someone touched by him. There's Juan Zamora, whose medical studies at Cornell were made possible by the stratagems of Barroso; the beautiful Michelina from Mexico City, whom Barroso marries; off to his son and then takes as his own, and the working girls of Barroso's maquiladoras, who lust after the gringo male dancers of the clubs. The outrageous racism of Fuentes's Anglo characters, such as Miss Amy Dunbar and border patrol Dan Polonsky, may seem excessive and stereotyped, but it is also hard to deny that such attitudes exist along this troubled border. Fuentes masterfully interweaves Mexican politics, economics, and history within the individual stories, giving a brilliant update on relations between an extremely poor country and the richest in the world. A recent (1995) and highly recommended work by Mexico's premiere novelist. Jack Shreve, Allegany Community Coll., Cumberland, Md.La Jornada
This exuberant fiction contains and alludes to journalism, politics, economics, famous tall tales, and picaresque adventures, all united by the "vitality, variety, and narrative force that Fuentes always gives his work.Kirkus Reviews
A sardonic "novel in nine stories" about relations between the US and Mexico, by the latter country's acclaimed author of such cosmopolitan fictions as Terra Nostra (1976) and The Campaign (1991), among others.Each story portrays a conflict involving a family member, intimate, or business associate of "the powerful political Leonardo Barroso," a deal- and king-maker with a foot in both countries and a shadowy demeanor and personal history. For example, "A Capital Girl" traces the emotional vacillations endured by Michelina, an impressionable young woman who idolizes her godfather, Leonardo, as a result accepting marriage to his deeply unstable son Mariano. These and other characters reappear in several stories, a few of which are rather too nakedly discursive (e.g., the wheelchair-bound narrator's monologue in "The Line of Oblivion," and a predictably manic-depressive relationship between a wealthy white matron and her abused Mexican housemaid in "Girlfriends"). Indeed, most of the stories are too frequently interrupted by ironic commentaries on both American arrogance and myopia and Mexican illiteracy and inertia. However, "Spoils" presents a delicious characterization of its protagonist Dionisio, a cooking expert and gourmet explorer of several species of appetites. And in "Malintzin Las Maquilas"—a lively, sexy story whose sociopolitical content emerges naturally from its character relationships—Fuentes vividly depicts the volatile bonding among three women factory workers. The long (and uneven) climactic story, "Rio Grande, Rio Bravo," explores in too pat a fashion the human and diplomatic ramifications of "crossing the border," and brings the volume to a stagy (if perfectly logical) violent end.
A vast improvement over Fuentes's recent self-indulgent metafiction Diana (1995), and a pretty creditable dramatization of the mocking rhyme with which the book leaves us: "Poor Mexico,/poor United States,/so far from God,/so near to one another."