Carmen and Grace
-
-
3.9 • 7 Ratings
-
-
- £7.99
-
- £7.99
Publisher Description
'Powerful' Sunday Times
'Electric' Danya Kukafka
'Vital' Katie Gutierrez
'A triumph' Alice Ryan
'A powerful read' Heat
'Read this book!' Angie Cruz
'An instant classic' Morning Star
'Deserves all the hype' Glamour
'Crackles with life' Xochitl Gonzalez
'The book of the year' Rene Denfeld
Carmen and Grace have been inseparable since they were little girls – more like sisters than cousins, survivors of a childhood marked by neglect and addiction. For too long, all they had was each other.
That is, until Doña Durka swept into their lives and changed everything, taking Grace into her home and playing an outsize role in Carmen's upbringing too.
But Durka is more than a beneficent force in their Bronx neighbourhood. She's also the leader of an underground drug empire, a larger-than-life matriarch who understands the importance of taking what power she can in a world too often ruled by violent men.
So when Durka dies suddenly, Carmen and Grace's lives are thrown into chaos. Grace has been primed to take over and has grand plans to expand the business, but Carmen is ready to move on – from Durka's shadow, and from always looking over her shoulder in fear.
As tough and tender as its main characters, Carmen and Grace is a devastatingly wise and intimate story about the bonds of female friendship, ambition and found family.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Melissa Coss Aquino’s masterful debut follows the entwined lives of two cousins—the titular Carmen and Grace—groomed into a life of crime when Grace is adopted by the leader of a drug trafficking organisation, the formidable Doña Durka, whose murder triggers the sequence of events that subsequently unfolds. Aquino opens with the aftermath, braiding, twisting and knitting together scenes from the past and present timelines, building up a cinematic image of New York City and The Bronx in the late ’90s. As the narrative voice switches from Carmen to Grace and back again, every morally grey tangle of the generation-spanning poverty web the players in this tale were born into—a birthright that is almost impossible to escape from—is slowly revealed. The complex interpersonal dynamics are balanced expertly, from the benevolence and exploitation that characterises Grace’s relationship with Doña Durka, to the fierce love and loyalty, suffused with mistrust, between the young women that make up her all-female crew. Paced like a breath-suspending thriller, Carmen & Grace explores grief, motherhood, friendship, power, wealth and class, the legacy of violence, and the illusion of choice. Between the lines is an empathetic love letter to girls filled with potential and dreaming beyond the limits their circumstances impose.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Coss Aquino's heartrending debut, two cousins become ensnared with a powerful Bronx drug trafficker. Grace, a college-educated young woman who deals drugs for powerful kingpin Doña "Durka" Rodriguez, emerges as the crew's new putative drug lord after Durka is killed by competing traffickers. In flashbacks, Grace recounts how Durka rescued her at 14 from a neglectful, crack-addicted mother and adopted her, providing a stable home, private school education, car, and other trappings of a middle-class life. At 16, Grace begins handling drug deliveries for Durka and reconnects with her cousin Carmen, who still lives in the neglect and poverty Grace escaped. Grace draws Carmen into the drug trade, though Carmen drops out of high school and forgets about college, thanks to the work's quick cash. The first half prizes plot over character development, leaving the cast to feel somewhat flat until the second half, when, in the aftermath of Durka's killing, Carmen gets pregnant at 23 with her boyfriend and faces the tough decision of whether to leave the crew and have the baby. Readers who go the distance will be pleased to find a deep exploration of loyalty and the drug trade's complex relationship to the community. This is worth a look.
