Jose Builds a Woman - Softcover

Baross, Jan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1932010149 ISBN 13: 9781932010145

Publisher: Ooligan Press, 2006

Synopsis

Mesmerizing! Stunning! Elegant! Captivating! Powerful! Lush! A winner! Magical realism that seduces the reader from beginning to end!

When Ooligan's acquisitions committee discussed this marvelous first novel by Portland photographer/painter/dramatist Baross, the superlatives and exclamations wouldn't stop. Word spread, and soon Ooligan's other student publishers were waiting in line to read this novel set in a fictional Mexican coastal village. Jose is the story of Tortugina, the narrator, whose happiness and hardship are tied to the sea and to the men in her life, from her demanding father and dead lover to her cruel, abusive husband and beautiful, sensitive son.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Jose Builds a Woman is a novel in the sensual tradition of magical realism. With lush prose and dry humor, Baross captures the fluid boundaries between life and death.

The multi layered saga revolves around the impenetrable passions of Tortugina, the doyenne of bad love, Gabito, the beautiful and jealous octopus diver and their son, Jose, a boy obsessed with marrying a nun.

Mesmerizing! Stunning! Elegant! Captivating! Powerful! Lush! A winner! Magical realism that seduces the reader from beginning to end! "What a romp! Let Baross take you for a wild ride on her magical-realist camel, from the village of Octopus to the village of The Women, through an extravagantly carnal Mexico of the imagination." -Ursula K. Le Guin

"One of the most magical and beautiful and honest novels about men and women, lovers, husbands, wives, about mothers and sons, about life and death, that you’ll ever be privileged to read. Baross has a gift for tender beauty on the page. I can’t remember when I last enjoyed a book this much." -Molly Gloss, author of The Jump-Off Creek

From the Inside Flap:

From the Prologue:

IN THE SHADE of the purple jacaranda in the jungle by the sea, my son Jose builds a woman.

Jose makes adobe bricks in the hot morning sun with red clay from the River Rojo and straw from our fields. He rolls his hands over the wet earth. The bricks form to the shapes he will need. Rounded for the buttocks, curved for the breasts, sturdy for the flat toes.

While the bricks dry in the sun, Jose clears a knoll of pepper trees and builds tall scaffolding from the branches. In the center of the scaffolding, he lays dry adobe bricks, as deep and wide as five beds. On top of the base, Jose builds the woman's feet. Her ankles are strong and slender, her shins straight, her thighs thick with being a woman, her mound gently curved. Her torso, small breasts, and strong neck rise gradually toward the top of the canopied trees. Creamy, wet clay between the bricks weds them like the layers of a cake.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ooligan Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1932010149
• ISBN 13: 9781932010145
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 308