Cecile Pineda (1932–2022)

I can’t begin to describe the plot so will quote this from the Kirkus Review: In Malyerba – like Macondo, a mythic town that ``progress had yet to visit'' – a house is taken over by bees, a woman is crystallized into honey, a mummy-like mother-in-law floats toward Heaven, and protagonist Ana Magdalena is expelled from convent school for stripping naked while saving a classmate from drowning.

This is a wonderful send-up of magical realism, with a decidedly feminist bent. I laughed out loud at the ridiculous antics and over-the-top descriptions. Pineda is a wonderful writer, with beautiful phrasing, interesting characters, deliciously wicked scenes of passion, and a perfect sense of timing. I was engaged and pulled into the story from page one, and when I finished, I wanted to start from the beginning and read it again.… (mais)

It should first be noted that I hated this book at first. I didn't like the format, basically this small 220 page novel (with HUGE spacing) is composed of 120 chapters, chapters are anywhere from a lone paragraph to a page or 2. This certainly makes the book read faster, but could get a little annoying as well. I also didn't like the writing style (she, put lots of commas, for, basically, no reason, in every place, imaginable) and I really didn't know what was going on with the story, which seemed nonexistent in the beginning.

Bored with it I read the summary on the back of the book because I didn't feel like starting another chapter, and then it all made sense. You see, the story is about a stonecutter who is recruited to design and execute 120 friezes for a massive temple dedicated to buddha. So, the book is supposed to imitate the 120 friezes with each chapter being a sort of snapshot of the main character's life. After I realized what the author was trying to do, it made a lot more sense. At that point, I started to actually enjoy the novel a bit more. At the end of each chapter, I found myself pausing and imagining the events that took place in that chapter/paragraph as a carving in stone. Or I'd imagine the author was looking at a wall of friezes and inventing the story by examining the depictions. This definitely made the novel more enjoyable to read.

However, it doesn't always work well. Some times, it felt like the author just typed up a couple pages, and then chopped them up into 5-6 chapters for really no apparent reason, except perhaps to simply hit 120 chapters. This lessened my enjoyment because, when 2-3 chapters are all a single conversation, my imaginings of the friezes became obsolete, because each frieze was the same.

Ultimately, I'd label it as interesting.… (mais)