LOOSING MY ESPANISH
H. G. Carrillo, . . Pantheon, $23 (336pp) ISBN 978-0-375-42319-2
In Carrillo's energetic but uneven debut, Óscar Delossantos—41, alone and losing his job as a history teacher at a Chicago parochial school—has 34 days left to educate his uninterested students about what he holds to be the essentials of life: family, love and Cuba, the "Isla Belle, Belle Caribe." The sermons that follow mimic his ersatz philosophical view of history—for him, it is "space, like a series of rooms that we can just as easily step into as out of"—as they jolt from subplot to subplot while telling, in extravagant Spanglish, the history of his native island and, alternately, the tale of his and his mother's struggles as they fled Cuba for the U.S. when he was a child and Batista had fallen. Vivid local color abounds: Delossantos's mother, Amá, who owns a beauty shop, makes a divine
Reviewed on: 09/27/2004
Genre: Fiction
Other - 193 pages - 978-0-307-48768-1
Paperback - 336 pages - 978-1-4000-7814-1