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Overview
Loverboys is the award-winning author Ana Castillo's stunning collection of twenty-three stories that depict the wildly varied faces of love, from rapturous beginnings to bittersweet endings. From the regret-tinged soulfulness of the title story in which a woman reminisces about a former lover, to the down-and-dirty settling of scores in "Vatolandia" to the high-spirited comedy of "La Miss Rose," about a West Indian fortuneteller on a mission to help the lovelorn, Ana Castillo bares the secret hearts of women and men. By turns hopeful, hilarious, and heartbreaking, Loverboys is an irresistible pairing of author and subject. In prose that is at once erotic and eloquent, streetwise and surreal-in a voice like no other in recent literary fiction-Ana Castillo covers the waterfront of modern romance and proves why she is, in the words of Julia Alvarez, "a first-rate storyteller."
Synopsis
“Seductive ... full of infectious vigor ... these stories demand, above all, to be listened to.”—New York Times Book Review
Publishers Weekly
PW gave a starred review to these "23 tales of love, lust and the Latina tradition." (Aug.)
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
PW gave a starred review to these "23 tales of love, lust and the Latina tradition." (Aug.)Library Journal
Castillo, a novelist, poet, and critic who has won numerous awards, including the Carl Sandberg Prize, has been described as a first-rate storyteller. But in these terse, fragmentary pieces, her strength would seem to be in capturing character through a well-sketched situation. In the few pages of "Again, Like Before," for instance, missed cues at a disastrous dinner show just how badly matched two women are as lovers. As the narrator finally concludes wearily, "I left you simply because I did not love you," we feel her hard-edged indifference not just to her lover but to the world. Throughout, the prose is hip, street smart, and cutting"Then his brothers started ragging him about running around with a lesbianor worse, a bisexual, nothing more shady or untrustworthy (except a liberal)," the settings refreshingly far from suburbia, and the action (such as it is) on the edge. It might be satisfying to see Castillo develop her ideas more fully, but it's probably not on her agenda. For contemporary and gay/lesbian collections.Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"Kirkus Reviews
While explicitly probing the politics of otherness, this debut collection of 26 stories from Chicago writer Castillo (So Far from God, 1993, etc.) also concerns itself with the universal patterns of love.The varied permutations of love and lust—gay, straight, or familial—probed in these tales, most of them told from the viewpoints of Latino men and women, reflect a kaleidoscopic view of life in el Norte. Castillo has an unobtrusive tone, believably capturing the voices of her characters, who range from smooth- talking hustlers to exotic fortune-tellers like the turbaned, one- eyed Miss Rose. The longest and most fully realized piece, "La Miss Rose," follows this hectic woman of magic powders and erratic advice after she adopts two women she believes to be in desperate need of her guidance, dragging them from the desert to Chicago for a steamy summer of adventures. Comic and endearing, it and the "Christmas Story of the Golden Cockroach" are the most purely enjoyable stories here. In "Cockroach," contemporary Chicagoans attempt to breed (with explosive results) a very special variety of roach to help ease their winter hardships. Though often amusing, the majority of the stories consider the less magical and blithe aspects of life. The title piece, a powerful narrative of lost love, is narrated by a woman watching two boys make out in a bar while she pines for the lover who has abandoned her. In "Vatolandia," the beautiful and independent Sara Santistevan lists, categorizes, then dismisses all of the crazy, mixed-up men in town, choosing to remain alone. And in "Maria Who Paints and Who Bore Juan Two Children," the title character, who has left her husband, watches in despair as he takes her children to a survivalist retreat.
Only occasionally missing the mark (there are some failed narrative experiments), Castillo offers a substantial and noteworthy first collection, both honest and witty in its portrayal of love among the exiled.