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Guests | October 15, 2009

A Few Initial and Not-Comprehensive Meditations on Group Novels

1 comment By Michelle Wildgen

I am a sucker for a book about a group. What reminded me of this was Joanna Smith Rakoff's A Fortunate Age, her homage to Mary McCarthy's endlessly re-readable... Continue »

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Kirsten, August 18, 2006

This fantastic graphic novel follows the adventures of a young woman named Carla who embarks on a somewhat misguided journey to Mexico in search of her roots. While she is half Mexican, Carla quickly discovers that her class and cultural background make it impossible for her to ever truly be accepted and fit in with her Mexican friends. Despite this, Carla rejects her ex-pat friends and falls in with Memo, a communist pseudo-intellectual, and his attractive but dim friend Oscar.
Carla's innocence and longing to belong sometimes make you cringe as you're reading. Memo is a jerk and cuts down Carla at every turn, but she puts up with it because of what I can only describe as her liberal white guilt. She's continually caught between cultures -- she rejects her white friends, but simply can't be accepted by her Mexican friends, or at least not by Memo and his fellow "revolutionaries." As it turns out, her wish to belong ends up causing her to overlook more than just Memo's insults, and she finds herself in very real danger.
The events in this book, particularly in the second half, could have failed miserably in the hands of a lesser writer, but Abel does an excellent job of setting things up so that they feel believable. She also manages to keep Carla very real without making her unsympathetic. The artwork is dense and well-suited to the subject, and this is a very rewarding book.

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