Conclusion
Forcing myself to read the last third of the book did not redeem it, and reinforced my initial disappointment. The only way I could endure the chain of events that followed Maribel and Mayor’s oppressive separation was to detach from all the characters, both the children and the adults. This defeated the purpose of tragedy and turned the story into a grotesque fable of woe, with no possibility of catharsis. I was not cleansed and renewed as Greek audiences were millennia ago.
Nor does the book offer any sense of meaning to the trials and tribulations the characters undergo. Events just happen. Garret accosts Maribel. Mayor and Maribel are caught in a huge snowstorm. Arturo impetuously confronts Garret and his father. Maribel wakes up. This bewildering stream of "one damn thing after another" might help us accept some of our own difficulties, but it does not provide that extra element which elevates them into something coherent, universal, true, and perhaps beautiful.
No doubt readers will react to this book in their own personal way, depending upon their experience and expectations. On a superficial level the story does grind along to its gruesome end, and that may be satisfying to some. Others may question the dark turns of the narrative and ask "Why did it have to turn out this way?" Has the author convinced us that it must fall apart for Alma, Maribel, and Mayor, as it did for Dido, Romeo and Juliet? No she does not.
Since the book is not tragedy, then what is it? Is it high school drama? Is it tabloid reporting? Who is the intended audience? Is it the immigrants who might identify with this predicament? Is it liberal white people trying to deal with grime on their shoes? These question remain in my mind, without any satisfying resolution. The book seems as muddled in its final form as it is in its plot, characterization, and thematic overtones.
The fact that an amateur writer like myself would discover such glaring inconsistencies and faults in a major novel says something about the decline of editorial acumen in our modern publishing industry. An astute editor should have caught these deficiencies during the initial stages of review, demanding that the author either correct them or suffer rejection of the work. Instead it seems that editors today are no more proficient in their trade than the common reader whom they supposedly serve.
Perhaps authors of the glowing advance comments wanted their name on the back cover, to ride the wave and keep them in the limelight. This reveals the ugly underbelly of modern writing and publishing, where commercial interests take precedence to fine literature. Money dictates art. Art no longer strives for the true or beautiful, but the sensational and ugly.
This reflects upon our own confusing and troubled times. People deliberately misrepresent or twist facts to gain Internet fame. Institutions of public interest become distorted by corporate influence. Displaced people become more common as political, economic, and environmental disasters proliferate.
Literature and art can help people make sense of these troubling conditions by encapsulating experience into meaningful stories, carrying us out of our own cherished belief systems so that we might perceive and somehow understand the chaos of modern culture. This can be its vital function and incalculable value to society. Failure to do so devalues literature and art.
Henriquez’s book does not bring readers to a sincere experience of suffering or compassion for the characters as fellow human beings, nor does it offer readers a way to digest the turmoil in their own predicaments or in the modern world. It does not provide a vessel to help us carry our own grief. It fails to take us inside the true nature of these people, and leaves them just as opaque to us as they were before. We are handed a look at these unknown Americans, but we never truly see them.