Small town, many stories in âAmerican Deliriumâ
A dizzying, delirious new novel
By Max Winter Globe Correspondent,Updated February 18, 2021, 6:50 p.m.
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Betina González, author of American Delirium Handout
âThe day he found a woman hiding in his closet, Vik had dreamt about winning a Ping-Pong tournament.â This first sentence of âAmerican Deliriumâ raises the novelâs implicit questions: What is life but a series of illogical juxtapositions, followed by our attempt to make sense of them? And without a guarantee of success, only small notches on a belt that goes on forever? In Argentine novelist Betina Gonzálezâs unsettling, fantastical, and often hilarious English-language debut, characters in a small midwestern town find themselves facing inexplicable events they canât entirely handle. None overly remarkable but all quite human and indelible, these figures draw us into their struggles as each tries to right an u
If 2021 is shaping up to be anything like 2020, we’re looking at a
lot more time with only ourselves for company. Luckily, Latine authors are up for the challenge of helping to fill that time. From a novel-in-verse about maybe falling in love with Selena’s ghost to a memoir about growing up queer and biracial in rural Indiana, 2021 promises us a dizzying variety of novels, memoirs, and poetry to carry us through the remaining lock-in.
Here are 10 books coming out (mostly) in the first half of 2021, to keep you company while you wait for your vaccine:
Marcos Gonsalez,
Pedro’s Theory: Reimagining the Promised Land