The Buddha Book: A Novel - Softcover

Rodriguez, Abraham

Softcover

ISBN 10: 031226299X ISBN 13: 9780312262990

Publisher: Picador, 2001

Synopsis

Dinky, Jose, and Barbara are teens living in the Bronx. Dinky wants to put his father's drug dealing reputation behind him; Jose has just been dumped by his girlfriend who's moved on to the neighborhood's new drug dealer, Angel; Barbara's the smart girl who desperately wants to be noticed. Secretly, Dinky and Jose draw, write, and distribute "Buddha Book," a comic of outrageous tales based on their life in the Bronx. Things change suddenly when, in a fit of rage, Jose murders his ex. Jose wants to turn himself in. But Dinky convinces him that he's committed the perfect crime and would be in great danger if Angel were to discover the real story. The Buddha Book follows Jose as he moves toward acknowledgement of what he has done and finds a way to confess it; details Dinky's escape from the clutches of his father to begin a new life; and traces Barbara's first steps toward becoming a woman. Lyric, inspired, and darkly funny, The Buddha Book is a powerful novel that brilliantly evokes teenagers at war with themselves and with the place in which they live.

About this title

About the Author

Abraham Rodriguez is the author of Spidertown and a collection of short stories entitled The Boy Without a Flag, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1993. He is a panel member of The New York State Council on the Arts. He lives in the Bronx, New York.

From Publishers Weekly

Muddied by unconvincing characters and careless prose, this follow-up to Rodriguez's American Book Award-winning debut novel, Spidertown, struggles to find a new way to once again chronicle the life of Puerto Rican teenagers searching for identity in the South Bronx. Jose and his best friend, Dinky, the son of an imprisoned drug dealer, are high school classmates who surreptitiously publish The Buddha Book, an underground comic book that tells true tales "real story, real names, real scenes" about their life in the Bronx. After Jose murders his ex, who's left him for a drug kingpin named Angel, he is plagued with guilt and looks for a way to confess. The boys decide to tell all in a final issue of their comic book. But before they do, Rodriguez introduces a host of characters with flashy, pseudo-tragic personas including Jose's stepsister, Anita, a stripper and Angel-groupie with a penchant for killing her lovers who inhabit a dismal world of chaos and disorder. It's obviously a world Rodriguez knows well, as he was born, raised and continues to live in the South Bronx. But this time, his hurried and repetitive narrative fails to convey his characters' motives and despair in a meaningful way. The comic book device is similarly underworked. Rodriguez avoids revealing much about the comics' content or impact, reporting merely that the last issue "arrived with a splash." What we get instead are aimless depictions of teenage liaisons, where the girls are more sex-starved than the boys who indulge them, and too many shoddy metaphors such as "Dinky's eyes jumped around the half-dark, like he had gotten a good burst of energy from somewhere." (Aug.)Forecast: This disappointing sophomore effort will soon migrate to remainder tables, though the comic-book jacket should attract a few browsers.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 031226299X
• ISBN 13: 9780312262990
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304