Alburquerque: A Novel
by Rudolfo Anaya
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Book Summary Information
Author: Rudolfo AnayaEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-02-16
ISBN: 0826340598
Number of pages: 286
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Book Reviews of Alburquerque: A Novel
Book Review: Wholly unimpressive
Summary: 1 Stars
This book is fraught with cliches, flat characters, and painful genre confusion. Female characters exist merely to be slept with, and male characters are defined almost solely by their desire to sleep with those women. Anaya attempts to cover his complete lack of subtlety with a veneer of Southwest mysticism and Mexican slang. For anyone who has ever been to the Southwest, however, this simply isn't enough to make up for the terrible story. Because of his co-opting of Native-American and Mexican mysticism, Anaya has sections where he tries to slip into magical realism, a move that doesn't really convince in a novel largely focused on political drama.
Anaya has been praised for his spare prose and straightforward writing style. However, this is not minimalism on the Hemingway scale, where there is drama and action hidden beneath the text, unspoken. Anaya will gladly tell you exactly what everything means as many times as he thinks necessary to make sure you don't miss it (usually, this is about 5 repetitions of the same bald thematic statement). The only passages open to varying interpretations are unnecessarily cryptic and meaningless--the old lady who tells a main character, "Tu eres tu"--"You are you," for example.
I suggest you read the first three pages of the novel. If, like me, you burst out laughing at the horribly cliche conventions and lines (The main character's first act is to look in a mirror so that we know what he looks like, and by page 3, he actually utters, "...but that was another time, another world"), then give it a pass. If not, then maybe you can overlook enough of Anaya's flaws to glean something from the novel (though I'm pretty clueless as to what that might be).
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