O's 2010 Summer Reading List
Lush historical novels, wise contemporary tales, thrillers that will scare the dickens out of you. (And speaking of Dickens, we've got him, too.)
8 of 20
The Madonnas of Echo Park
By Brando Skyhorse
199 pages;
Free Press
Culture, identity, and politics are just a few of the threads
masterfully woven through the partly autobiographical novel of linked
stories that is The Madonnas of Echo Park. Author Brando
Skyhorse—so named because his mother revered the famous actor—grew up in
the largely Mexican-American L.A. neighborhood of the title, which
explains his understanding of its residents: among them a gang member, a
day laborer, and a little girl tragically in the wrong place at the
wrong time. Far from stock, Skyhorse's characters also include an
iconoclastic bus driver who considers himself more American than Mexican
and rails against newcomers, illegal or no, and a maid who has one
complex relationship with her gringa employer. ("When men want relief
they hire a whore," she observes. "When women want relief they hire a
cleaning lady.") What happens to a neighborhood that's overrun by
gentrification and warring intracultural factions? Violence, for one
thing—but also, finally, in Skyhorse's indelible storytelling, something
that begins to look like hope.
— Sara Nelson
Published 06/17/2011