Summer Reading

Malas by Marcela Fuentes

It’s been a minute, I know.

But I wanted to let you all know about a wonderful book that will be in stores tomorrow: Malas by Marcela Fuentes. It’s already garnered stars from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, BookPage, and Booklist. Amazon, The Washington Post and People have all named it a top book of June. And I know there’s far more critical acclaim to come.

I loved this novel. It’s so full of life, even as death is a constant presence and woven throughout. At its heart, it’s the story of two women:  Lulu Muñoz, who is 15 and living in a border town in Texas in the 90’s, and Pilar Aguirre, who we meet both as a young woman in the 50’s and later in life in the 90’s. We get to know these women—their fierceness, their loyalties, their passions—and we also get to intimately know the community that they live in.

Fuentes’s prose is beautiful and vibrant, whether she is describing the scenery (“The sky to the west foamed dark blue with thunderheads.”) or the way something feels (“But my anger was different now. It was bigger; it waited..”) Revenge and anger and desire are particularly well-described:

I felt the black glossy thing inside me, the way it was always thickened up and hard, but also ready to erupt. I felt it coming up. I opened my mouth and screeched, a huge shining wail of fury, so much fury. But paced fury, because I wanted it to last and last. It was something I breathed through and kept pushing out of my body. A wall of sound. It was shrill and vibrating. I wound down by throwing in those coyote cackles.

Her descriptions are cinematic and yet full of precise detail. We follow objects throughout the story: a pair of earrings, a ring, beautiful dresses for a quinceañera. We attend a quince in the 50’s with pregnant Pilar, and we’re with Lulu as she plans—somewhat reluctantly—for hers in the 90’s. These two events form the bookends of the novel, and they’re so wonderfully described:

It was a neighborhood party, so one sat wherever one found a seat, and after dinner, spent the rest of the night table-hopping. Folding tables covered with pink tablecloths, decked with small dishes of polvorones, were arranged in the grass around the concrete slab dance floor, and on either side of the assembly line of food were tubs of iced beer and Coca-Cola. An easel had been set up with Dulce’s quinceañera portrait, next to the table with a pink and white cake in the shape of a flying angel and a large curly-haired china doll.

Her characters are alive on the page, their dialogue doing so much work in defining who they are and how they engage with others. Lulu’s chapters are in the first person, and her voice is unique and strong and believable. Fuentes also weaves Spanish throughout the book, in a way that allows the reader to become even more familiar with this Tejano community that lives in the space between Mexico and the United States. Music is ever-present—Lulu is in a band, something she hides from her music-loving father—and the 90’s, of course, were when Selena brought Tejano music to wider acclaim. (Fuentes has put together a playlist if you want a soundtrack as you read!) I loved how Fuentes never explains to the reader who may be less familiar with Spanish or with the Tejano culture but requires, instead, that the reader do the work to meet her on the page.

Finally, there are interstitial moments, threaded throughout the novel, that bring us deep into Pilar’s thoughts. Pilar’s chapters are in the third person point-of-view, so there is a bit more of a remove from her character than from Lulu. These interstitial moments are beautiful, full of longing and yearning, allowing us to get to know Pilar in such an intimate way. Here is one lovely example: “Looking for that girl is like looking backward through a telescope. She’s far away and so tiny I can cover her with the tip of my finger, like blotting out the sun. I can still feel her radiating. But I don’t know where she has gone.”

Do yourself a favor and pick up this wonderful novel.