ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
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Letters from Latin America
Reviews of fiction by Mexican writer Daniel Saldana Paris and Chilean author Andrea Jeftanovic, and poetry by Latinx writers Matt Sedillo and Ricardo Alberto Maldonado
Matt Sedillo / Photo Credit: FlowerSong Press
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
RAMIFICATIONS (Charco Press, £9.99) is Mexican writer and poet Daniel Saldan Paris’s second novel and it’s a courageous and moving story told from the perspective of a child living in the Educacion neighbourhood of Mexico City as he tries to make sense to the sudden disappearance of his mother Teresa.
She abandoned the family home to join the Zapatista uprising that began in 1994, leaving behind her two children, a husband and a whole life in the city.
Through startling family anecdotes, childhood memories and the experiences of everyday life, Paris has managed to create a brave book that sheds light on the inner life of a working-class family in a country blighted by years of violence and machismo.
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A ghost story by Mexican Ave Barrera, a Surrealist poetry collection by Peruvian Cesar Moro, and a manifesto-poem on women’s labour and capitalist havoc by Peruvian Valeria Roman Marroquin