Santiago's Way - Hardcover

Laurent, Patricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0720611903 ISBN 13: 9780720611908

Publisher: Peter Owen Publishers, 2004

Synopsis

Laurent’s bold prize-winning novel is one of the most important works of fiction to emanate from Mexico in the past 50 years.

Imagine that all your life you've been guided by someone else. Someone who's steered you away from trouble, taken you across the world, brought you success. He's called Santiago and he lives in your head and now he's turned against you. The unnamed narrator of this debut novel blunders through life, never quite getting things right until the arrival of Santiago, a male presence who appears in her mind at the age of 14. Thanks to him, the naive innocence that has led her into trouble so many times is gone, replaced by a street-smart wisdom that makes her attractive and successful, with a ruthless streak that gets her out of sticky situations time and time again. But as time goes by, Santiago's good advice becomes increasingly paranoid. From his operations room inside the narrator's mind he tortures her with old photos, maps, videos the story of everything that has ever gone wrong in her life. He causes fits and hallucinations, anything to get his way. Suddenly Santiago is dangerous, and will stop at nothing to be in control.

About this title

About the Author

Patricia Laurent is the author of several prize-winning short stories as well as numerous articles and creative writing pieces for Spanish language newspapers and magazines.

From Booklist

Laurent's unnamed narrator's life slowly develops, like a picture in the novel's "darkroom" of ideas that question conventional wisdom about consciousness, varying mental states, and willful choice. Internally guiding the narrator is Santiago, whom she first hears when she is 14 (suggesting adolescence-onset schizophrenia). Santiago replaces her naive blunderings with what seem to be worldly wise experience and beneficial, albeit self-serving, responses. Yet Santiago is hardly benign, for he tortures the narrator with reminders resembling childhood "scripts" that dictate potentially devastating adult behavior. Laurent compellingly renders the narrator's internal struggles as she hallucinates at Santiago's instigation. And bad as her delusions are, are they better than her real world, in which the dribbling girl is sexually abused by the lollipop seller; proceeds to entice the mentally challenged, more dramatically dribbling cheese bun seller; and is punished by witnessing her father simulating a beheading? Suffused with surreal comedy, captivatingly written, almost bewitching, this Mexican novel of shadow presences in the mind should please fans of challenging fiction. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Peter Owen Publishers
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0720611903
• ISBN 13: 9780720611908
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 200