The Sinaloa Story - Hardcover

Gifford, Barry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151002495 ISBN 13: 9780151002498

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1998

Synopsis

A complex, harrowing story follows Ava, a Mexican prostitute with ambition, who convinces a client to help her murder a rich rancher, disappears with the loot, and then turns up as a major player in a revolutionary band's camp.

About this title

About the Author

Barry Gifford (born October 18, 1946) is an American author, poet, and screenwriter known for his distinctive mix of American landscapes and film noir- and Beat Generation-influenced literary madness. He is described by Patrick Beach as being "like if John Updike had an evil twin that grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and wrote funny..."[1]He is best known for his series of novels about Sailor and Lula, two sex-driven, star-crossed protagonists on the road. The first of the series, Wild at Heart, was adapted by director David Lynch for the 1990 film of the same title. Gifford went on to write the screenplay for Lost Highway with Lynch. Much of Gifford's work is nonfiction.

Reviews

Once again, Gifford (Baby Cat-Face, 1995, etc.) depicts protagonists trying to make a brighter life for themselves while betraying lovers and staying one step ahead of homicidal maniacs. When former motorcycle mechanic DelRay Mudo joins up with Ava Varazo, a beautiful but dangerous prostitute, she convinces him to "do something meaningful with his life." In this case, something meaningful involves stealing half a million dollars from Indio Desacato, owner of a thriving bordello in the Texas border town of Sinaloa. Standing in their way is Indio's 380-pound bodyguard, Thankful Priest, a former football player who once gouged out his own eyeball while high on various narcotics. What Ava really wants is to return to her Mexican home of La Villania ("the despicable act") and fund a peasant's revolution, a plan that doesn't necessarily include DelRay. After the showdown at Indio's, the narrative switches to Leander Rhodes, an ex-Marine, and his young wife, Cobra Box, who travel to La Villania to join the revolution. Also in the mix are a white supremacist, a boarding school-educated Italian hooker and a cross-dressing 14-year-old piano player. Like Sailor and Lula of Gifford's previous novels (including Wild at Heart), Delray and Ava can't avoid the violence that surrounds them (nor do they always want to), but, in Gifford's hands, their troubles are elevated to a gritty, visceral poetry of the marginalized.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

One neo-noir thriller too many from Gifford (Baby Cat-Face, 1995, etc.). When Gifford's surrealistic slices of down-and-out life in the South and Southwest started appearing (in the series of novels featuring Sailor and his true love Lula), they sounded a fresh chord. He nicely mixed laconic hustlers and heroes with a hard- boiled prose and the hectic pace and crowded adventures of a folk tale, creating a wry variation on noirish thrillers. The books were both sardonic and violent. But the formula has grown somewhat stale; even Gifford seems to be losing interest. This time out, the story begins as a typically kinky thriller, featuring Ava Varazo, a tough and alluring prostitute intent on settling scores with her boss, Indio Descato, a fatally self-confident hood.. She needs help to do so, and DelRay Mudo, a restless mechanic, perfectly fits the bill: He's an outsider, enamored of her, and not shy of violence. With DelRay's help, Ava manages to rip off Indio. Then the tale takes one of several jarring turns. Ava isn't simply a lost soul; she's a Mexican revolutionary, and the money she steals from Indio isn't meant to bankroll their life together but to buy weapons for her comrades. DelRay follows her south, and gets drawn into the uprising against the Mexican government (the rebels refer to themselves as ``The Countless Raindrops,'' anticipating a groundswell of support). Other characters show up, including a tough, honorable American ex-soldier and his black wife and, of course, Indio and his boys following Ava's trail. Then, curiously, Gifford allows the narrative to dwindle to a stop; some characters die off-stage, others disappear, and a fragmentary diary, kept by a prostitute, intrudes. The ending is needlessly cryptic. Gifford remains a talented technician. There is nasty humor, and some wonderfully peculiar characters here, but there isn't much else. A puzzling, rather inert, work. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0151002495
• ISBN 13: 9780151002498
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 231