Fishlight

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 28 JAN 2002

"A Dream of Childhood" is an appropriate subtitle for this impressionistic semiautobiographical novel. Moving on from her clever parody of magic realism, The Love Queen of the Amazon, Pineda tells the melancholy story of five-year-old Cecile, who lives in a tiny New York City apartment with her bizarre and often cruel parents. Emilio is her prophet-in-training Mexican father who either spends time alone in his room cutting up newspapers or perusing a mysterious book that eventually gets him kicked out of the house. He stretches Cecile's imagination and helps to form her view of the world by telling her such things as "Everyone could have a double somewhere" and "God is sadly inexperienced." Emilio suffers a strained relationship with his wife, Cecile's high-strung Swiss mother, whom he calls Purtzi. She has "eel glass eyes" when she's upset, which is often, and maintains an aloof detachment around her inquisitive daughter. Among the Mommy Dearest highlights, Purtzi locks Cecile out of the apartment when she's caught playing with her mother's makeup, and takes her to be displayed naked in front of a friend's psychology class. Rebellious Cecile is wounded by her mother's actions, but not cowed: she does what she wants regardless of the consequences, thus protecting her inextinguishable inner spark. Pineda ably captures the fragmented, superintense perceptions of a precocious child, constructing this poignant fictional memoir in crystalline, poetic prose.