Publisher's Weekly Review
Sensual prose softens the crushing blows that life doles out to almost every character in this latest from Garcia (Dreaming in Cuban), in which six lives cross paths in a luxury hotel somewhere in the tropics of Central America. It's a gloomy portrait of modern life, told through a series of vivid, sometimes fantastical, narrative moments. In the honeymoon suite, a Korean businessman contemplates suicide as his pregnant 15-year old mistress flits around dressed up like a harlot from a bygone era. On the rooftop, waitress and ex-guerrilla Aura Estrada sips tea with her dead brother, who warns her of the arrival of the colonel who killed him. Martin Abe, the corpulent colonel, plots against leftists, curses the wife who's left him, and lusts after the most talked about guest in the hotel: Suki Palacios, also known as the Lady Matador. A Californian of Mexican and Japanese descent, Suki is in town to fight in the first ever Battle of the Lady Matadors in the Americas. The sultry atmosphere, dash of the supernatural, and well-developed characters are a winning mix, and the story's many parts move with frictionless ease. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
Garcia's fourth novel (after A Handbook to Luck) involves six people whose lives are spent in the Hotel Miraflor, in a nameless capital in Central America. Suki, a Japanese Mexican American female matador, is in town for a bullfighting tournament, and her presence in the hotel is met with awe. Aura, a waitress in the hotel cafe, is an ex-guerrilla whose brother, in the form of a ghost, persuades her to avenge his murder by a colonel who is a guest at the hotel. Ricardo, a poet and a Cuban exile, is traveling with his wife to adopt a baby from the area, while Gertrudis is the powerful and corrupt lawyer arranging the adoption. Won Kim, a suicidal manager of a local textile factory, has a mistress who is expecting his child. Garcia uses the romantic and familial relationships to detail the politics of Latin America. VERDICT Garcia, whose Dreaming in Cuban was a finalist for the National Book Award, creates characters whose situations are intertwined in a way that produces a powerful narrative. With its multicharacter story line and subject matter, this book recalls Roberto Bolano's 2666 and the novels of Julia Alvarez, and will appeal to readers who enjoyed those books.-Cristella Bond, Anderson P.L., IN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.