Award-Winning Books of 2016
'Tis the season for gold stickers on fresh book covers. Here's our lowdown on the best of the best.
By Mark Athitakis
By Luis Alberto Urrea
272 pages; Back Bay Books
Urrea is a master of Dickensian novels that capture the difficult lives of people shuttling between the United States and Mexico. This story collection, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, is more intimate, with quick glimpses into the culture clashes that transform lives across the border. In one story, a man labors to escape the barrio only be roped back into a criminal scheme; the hero of another has to tread carefully when he falls for the daughter of a drug kingpin. Urrea writes about these people with equal degrees of empathy and humor, and conjures up exquisite descriptions of the peculiar landscapes, from Iowa to the Rocky Mountains to a Mexican river thick with clutter: "a green DeSoto with its lights on, a washing machine with a religious statue in it as though the saint were piloting a circular boat, a blond wig that looked like a giant squid, a mysterious star-shaped object barely visible under the surface."
272 pages; Back Bay Books
Urrea is a master of Dickensian novels that capture the difficult lives of people shuttling between the United States and Mexico. This story collection, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, is more intimate, with quick glimpses into the culture clashes that transform lives across the border. In one story, a man labors to escape the barrio only be roped back into a criminal scheme; the hero of another has to tread carefully when he falls for the daughter of a drug kingpin. Urrea writes about these people with equal degrees of empathy and humor, and conjures up exquisite descriptions of the peculiar landscapes, from Iowa to the Rocky Mountains to a Mexican river thick with clutter: "a green DeSoto with its lights on, a washing machine with a religious statue in it as though the saint were piloting a circular boat, a blond wig that looked like a giant squid, a mysterious star-shaped object barely visible under the surface."
Published 11/17/2016