The Movies of My Life
A Novel
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Thirty-something seismologist Beltrán Soler knows about earthquakes, but he doesn't quite grasp the notion that life, like the tectonic plate movement he studies, is in constant motion.
One day he begins to remember the fifty most important movies of his life, ones he saw as a child and teenager growing up in California and Chile. As his mind ranges from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Beltrán reconnects with his past. Through his cinematic journey he ultimately comes to terms with his eccentric family's search for what makes the world physically shift around them -- and for the other, not so easy to measure, cultural shifts that throw us all off balance in different ways.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fuguet is the central figure of a loose group of young Latin American writers a movement known as McOndo who identify themselves in opposition to magical realism. In the author's second pop-culture saturated novel to be published in English (after Bad Vibes), seismologist Beltr n Soler tells the story of his childhood via a catalogue of movies that influenced him at pivotal moments. The setup is stiff the adult Beltr n is on his way to a conference in Tokyo when he is inspired to hole up in a hotel room in L.A. and begin writing his film-linked memoirs but once Fuguet begins piecing together Beltr n's lopsided, bicultural life, the novel speeds along, overflowing with ironic insight. Born in 1964, Beltr n lives in Encino, Calif., until he is 10, when his family (father, mother and younger sister Manuela) move back to Santiago. Bourgeois in Chile, but barely middle class in the U.S., the family inhabits a weird in-between world. In Encino, Beltr n reenacts The Poseidon Adventure with his friends; in Santiago, the family across the street (dubbed the Chilean Waltons by Beltr n) wins a family singing contest with its Sound of Music medleys. The ongoing political upheaval in Chile feels like another Technicolor drama, with a few alarming incursions into reality. But the novel's true turmoil is personal: Beltr n's difficult adjustment to life in Chile, his adolescence and his family's collapse (his father leaves his mother the night Saturday Night Fever opens). The movie titles heading each chapter serve as subtle triggers for reminiscence, but never become a structural straitjacket, and Fuguet's pop archness is tempered with honest feeling. Despite the rocky start, this is a fresh, notable effort.
