Expelled from her demure convent school for swimming nude, led kicking and screaming to the alter, Ana Magdalena Figueroa is kidnapped on her wedding night only to escape and find refuge in the arms of the man of her savagely hot adolescent fantasies. Her marriage to the patrician but penniless writer, Federico Orgaz y Orgaz leads her to even more colorful adventures, from her blissful initiation into the flourishing bordello of her Aunt Ofelia to her apotheosis as the Madam extraordinaire of the legendary Confiteria. Meanwhile, Federico takes his cue from the subversively wicked stories his wife tells him to find his writing suddenly taking off at a new and flourishing pace. Exploring the nature of romance, deceit, and female desire, Cecile Pineda blends social and political satire with magic realism in a tour-de-force of stunning originality.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Cecile Pineda is the author of five novels: The Love Queen of the Amazon, Frieze, Face, Redoubt and Bardo99. Her debut novel, Face, has been optioned by Rubicon Films, Ltd. Prior to her career as a novelist, Pineda founded and directed her own experimental ensemble theater company dedicated to the development of original performance works. She has taught fiction writing in the San Francisco Bay Area, in San Diego, and presently at Mills College in Oakland, California.
Sly magic realism; if Pineda's novel imitates (and occasionally parodies) instead of breaking ground, it's still fresh territory for the author of Face (1985) and Frieze (1986): a well- crafted, always entertaining read. 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. She and her genteel mother try various shifts to make ends meet until the child is married off--for money--to an older, world- renowned writer who proves to have financial problems of his own. In need of cash, seeking love, sex, and adventure (mostly with a pimpish boatman), and anxious to avoid her conjugal duties--i.e., listening to her husband read from his interminable manuscript--Ana Magdalena finds her vocation. Assuming that he's too busy writing (about a character much like herself) to notice, she transforms the great man's ancestral home into a bordello. Pineda pokes fun along the way at Borges, Garcˇa M rquez, Vargas Llosa, and others. Like Ishmael Reed, she scrambles historical periods: Ana Magdalena meets Benjamin Franklin, Charles Darwin, deluxe sound systems, and digital phones. Pineda occasionally deflates macho posturing and her happy hookers are more independent than usual, but she falls short of an assumption-reversing female vision. Masterful homage, with a touch of satiric response. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Shipping:
US$ 3.99
Within U.S.A.
Seller: Bookmans, Tucson, AZ, U.S.A.
Paperback. Condition: Good. Satisfaction 100% guaranteed. Seller Inventory # mon0000734118
Quantity: 1 available