Home Again - Hardcover

Yglesias, Jose

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0877959137 ISBN 13: 9780877959137

Publisher: Arbor House Pub Co, 1987

Synopsis

Yglesias, Jose, Home Again: A Novel

About this title

Reviews

It's been much too long since the last novel by the paterfamilias of the Yglesias clan, and meanwhile wife Helen and son Rafael both have been busy. His new one is a real change of pace: a raunchy, sometimes sentimental, occasionally bitter but ultimately touching story of an aging Latin (not, he insists, Hispanic) writer returning to his roots in Tampa. The action takes place in the course of one long night as Pinpin revisits his old home after the death of his parents, becomes involved with his hilariously gross cousin Tom-tom, drives around the old town, terrorizes customers at a stetMcDonald's by yelling "Reagan voters!" at them, and eventually nearly gets himself killed rescuing a half-witted relative of Tom-tom's from prostitution. All this is wonderfully realized, with an almost tangible sense of family solidarities and eccentricities and a superb ear for the sudden mood-swings of Latin speech. There is also another side to the novel that seems almost purely autobiographical and describes in flashbacks Pinpin's marrying into a well-to-do, snooty Anglo family, his work on a Communist newspaper, his growing bitterness, his quarrels with his grown sons as they become creatures of Hollywood. This, too, is crisply and convincingly done, but its tone is sour, and the two parts of the book never quite cohere. Still, most of Home Again is a rambunctious joy, from a writer who has been much missed.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Yglesias's first novel in more than a decade is about a "retired" writer who returns to his childhood home in the barrio of Tampa, Florida, after his wife's deathnot to start over, but to deteriorate as fast as he can. Munching Valiums, he reviews his rise from movie critic for the Daily Worker to successful ethnic novelist, his troubled marriage to a tall Boston WASP who calls herself a Socialist but has never met a man without a Brooks Brothers suit, the eclipse of his career in the conservative Eighties, and his sons' retreat into yuppiedom. Occasionally his Tampa relatives drop by to remind him that Boston WASPs are not the only hypocrites in the world. This caustic but frequently hilarious diatribe, similar to a Norman Lear television program, is a determinedly "unliterary" bookno artifice, just outrageous opinions. For larger fiction collections. Edward B. St. John, Loyola Marymount Univ. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Arbor House Pub Co
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0877959137
• ISBN 13: 9780877959137
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 180