Strange Pilgrims
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
In Barcelona, an aging Brazilian prostitute trains her dog to weep at the grave she has chosen for herself. In Vienna, a woman parlays her gift for seeing the future into a fortunetelling position with a wealthy family. In Geneva, an ambulance driver and his wife take in the lonely, apparently dying ex-President of a Caribbean country, only to discover that his political ambition is very much intact.
In these twelve masterly stories about the lives of Latin Americans in Europe, García Márquez conveys the peculiar amalgam of melancholy, tenacity, sorrow, and aspiration that is the émigré experience.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Exile and loss are the principal subjects of these 12 stories from the author of Love in the Time of Cholera , which capture with lyrical precision the emotions of disorientation and fear, coupled with a sense of new possibility, experienced by Latin Americans in Europe. Their pilgrimages seldom achieve their goals: the deposed politician in `` Bon Voyage , Mister President'' sells all his personal belongings to have an operation in Geneva that doesn't alleviate his pain; the devoted father who brings the miraculously intact remains of his seven-year-old daughter to Rome in ``The Saint'' can't get an audience with the Pope; a particularly chilling tale, ``I Only Came to Use the Phone,'' shows a woman accidentally taken to an insane asylum who can't get out even after she contacts her husband in Barcelona. A note of hard-won hope enters in stories like ``Maria dos Prazeres,'' which portrays an elderly prostitute selecting her burial site, but the mood darkens again as the collection closes with ``Tramontania,'' ``Miss Forbes's Summer of Happiness,'' ``Light Is Like Water'' and ``The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow,'' tales of suicide, murder, accidental death and tragically missed communications. Lovely prose and some poignant insights contribute to a collection that pleases in its parts but fails to strike a lasting note. But even a minor effort from Garcia Marquez is a standard toward which other writers aspire. 75,000 first printing; BOMC alternate.
