Booklist (starred review)
Pulling readers into the story with an impending hurricane and a mother and her two daughters waiting in fear, first-time novelist Aquino sets a mood of charged and desperate hope.”
AudioFile
With voices of childlike clarity, youthful intensity, and sheer menace, Diana Pou, Vico Ortiz, and Gabriel S. Rivera Vázquez lead a skilled group of Latin actors in narrating this surreal, dark fantasy…The all-Latin cast’s heartfelt deliveries and fluency in Spanish give a personal and authentic sound to this examination of what it is to lose one’s world. A chilling and penetrating listen.”
Chicago Review of Books
A complex, politically engaged work and deeply human story.”
Publishers Weekly
This lyrical and emotionally raw story will leave readers reflecting on the pain and promise of memory.”
New York Times bestselling author Gabriela Garcia
Deeply imagined and deeply felt—imagistic and strange and haunting—and simmering with grief and rage.”
From the Publisher
“Velorio recognizes that neither utopia nor dystopia are finite states, that they exist alongside and even inside one another, like the hurricane and the eye, the empire and the island. Xavier Navarro Aquino takes us on a riveting, harrowing journey through the aftermath, where the natural violence of the storm is compounded by disaster capitalists; the dead haunt the living; impossible decisions are made and seemingly impossible futures are born.” — Justin Torres, national bestselling author of We The Animals
“This debut novel traces a group of survivors who fall under the spell of an authoritarian cult leader in the days following Hurricane Maria’s destruction in Puerto Rico. It is deeply imagined and deeply felt – imagistic and strange and haunting – and simmering with grief and rage.” — Gabriela Garcia, New York Times bestselling author of Of Women and Salt
“Velorio is a novel reckoning with the tragic event of the great Puerto Rican hurricane and a vibrant examination of quiet lives in extremis. It is an assured, brilliant debut from a new, gifted writer.” — Chigozie Obioma, award-winning author of An Orchestra of Minorities
“‘We all thought we were ready for Maria.’ With this line, Xavier Navarro Aquino sets the stakes for his beautiful and heartbreaking novel. Was Puerto Rico ready for Hurricane Maria? No. And yet the people endured it anyway. In the vein of Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones, Velorio is a testimony to the resilience, the trials and triumphs, of a family, an island, a people. This is one hell of a debut.” — Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling
"...a Murakami-esque flavor, albeit darker....Navarro Aquino is an incredibly talented young writer." — New York Times Book Review
"Pulling readers into the story with an impending hurricane and a mother and her two daughters waiting in fear, first-time novelist Aquino sets a mood of charged and desperate hope. Inspired by Hurricane Maria's assault on Puerto Rico in 2017, Aquino presents a broader examination of loss, trauma, rebuilding, and even the notion of utopia....The rituals that Ura and his followers start in Memoria recall the ostracizing instinct of the stranded boys in Lord of the Flies, and raise questions about the warring instincts of humans in the face of disaster and societal breakdown. Aquino mixes Spanish into the English text and stacks up details and characters, trusting the readers to engage with the world he creates, which is richer for all that is implied and unexplained. This is a demanding read that rouses high emotions and offers no simplistic resolutions." — Booklist (starred review)
"The wake of Hurricane Maria—a storm so powerful and its effects so catastrophic that Maria has been retired from the circulation of names used by the National Weather Service—provides the energy for this remarkable, mythic novel, populated by a memorable cast." — BookPage
"[An] ambitious, movingly lyrical debut novel from Xavier Navarro Aquino that looks at the real-life tragedy of Hurricane Maria's impact on Puerto Rico through a grief-soaked, phantasmagorical lens....Velorio has apocalyptic fires and savage violence, but its most powerful moments are the quiet, searching ones, where Navarro Aquino reflects on the island's history of being 'taken and given like the final play in a losing game of dominoes.' Navarro Aquino's gift is translating that historical pain into the turbulent inner lives of his characters, all struggling in their own, sometimes destructive, ways with their feelings of loneliness and abandonment. Their wounds are older and deeper than those inflicted by Hurricane Maria." — Shelf Awareness
“Navarro Aquino debuts with an elegiac and fervent ode to Puerto Rico that opens in the wake of 2017’s Hurricane Maria . . . This lyrical and emotionally raw story will leave readers reflecting on the pain and promise of memory.”
— Publishers Weekly
"Xavier Navarro Aquino brings the island to vivid life in his haunting debut novel set in the aftermath of that disaster, as a ragtag group of survivors falls under the sway of a sinister cult leader. Like Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones before it, Velorio is both a complex, politically engaged work and deeply human story from a writer who’s surely at the start of a long career." — Chicago Review of Books
Gabriela Garcia
This debut novel traces a group of survivors who fall under the spell of an authoritarian cult leader in the days following Hurricane Maria’s destruction in Puerto Rico. It is deeply imagined and deeply felt – imagistic and strange and haunting – and simmering with grief and rage.”
Shelf Awareness
"[An] ambitious, movingly lyrical debut novel from Xavier Navarro Aquino that looks at the real-life tragedy of Hurricane Maria's impact on Puerto Rico through a grief-soaked, phantasmagorical lens....Velorio has apocalyptic fires and savage violence, but its most powerful moments are the quiet, searching ones, where Navarro Aquino reflects on the island's history of being 'taken and given like the final play in a losing game of dominoes.' Navarro Aquino's gift is translating that historical pain into the turbulent inner lives of his characters, all struggling in their own, sometimes destructive, ways with their feelings of loneliness and abandonment. Their wounds are older and deeper than those inflicted by Hurricane Maria."
Chigozie Obioma
Velorio is a novel reckoning with the tragic event of the great Puerto Rican hurricane and a vibrant examination of quiet lives in extremis. It is an assured, brilliant debut from a new, gifted writer.”
Justin Torres
Velorio recognizes that neither utopia nor dystopia are finite states, that they exist alongside and even inside one another, like the hurricane and the eye, the empire and the island. Xavier Navarro Aquino takes us on a riveting, harrowing journey through the aftermath, where the natural violence of the storm is compounded by disaster capitalists; the dead haunt the living; impossible decisions are made and seemingly impossible futures are born.
Victor LaValle
‘We all thought we were ready for Maria.’ With this line, Xavier Navarro Aquino sets the stakes for his beautiful and heartbreaking novel. Was Puerto Rico ready for Hurricane Maria? No. And yet the people endured it anyway. In the vein of Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones, Velorio is a testimony to the resilience, the trials and triumphs, of a family, an island, a people. This is one hell of a debut.
BookPage
"The wake of Hurricane Maria—a storm so powerful and its effects so catastrophic that Maria has been retired from the circulation of names used by the National Weather Service—provides the energy for this remarkable, mythic novel, populated by a memorable cast."
Kirkus Reviews
2021-12-15
Set in the aftermath of Hurricane María, Aquino’s debut blends magic with brutal reality.
It’s 2017, and the hurricane has struck. Throughout Puerto Rico, people are scrambling for food and water and—crucially—gasoline. There’s no aid in sight. Deep in the forest, Urayoán opens a little utopia he calls Memoria, where he offers gas and a place to stay. His henchmen—young boys in tracksuits—enforce loyalty and Urayoán’s arbitrary sense of order. Aquino’s novel revolves around Memoria and the desperate characters who gather there. These include Camila, whose sister died in a mudslide and whose body Camila lugs around until Urayoán interferes. There’s also Bayfish and Banto, Cheo and Damaris. These characters narrate the story in alternating chapters. Unfortunately, Aquino has done little to differentiate their voices: They all sound the same, which makes it hard to tell them apart. So much of the novel takes place on a feverish, elevated plane that—in a similar way—it’s not always easy to understand what’s actually happening. Aquino sacrifices literal meaning to a lyricism that quickly grows dizzying. Sometimes his lines seem to point vaguely toward a meaning that dissipates under closer scrutiny. “There are more lives on this island,” he writes, “divided by the millions left stranded overseas, shrieking back home to the sound of static.” Just a little more restraint in his prose stylings would have gone a long way. Aquino’s subject is rich enough; his prose threatens to overwhelm it.
An intriguing debut that flounders under the weight of its own lyricism.
