NOVEMBER 2021 - AudioFile
Author/narrator Sandra Cisneros triumphs with this beautiful story about female friendship. Cisneros portrays Corina, who finds letters from long-lost friends that she had when she was a young woman alone in Paris. The three women form a strong bond as poor foreign women navigating life in the glamorous City of Light. This audiobook is a beautiful reflection on the power of friendship; it is narrated in its entirety in English and then in Spanish. Cisneros shines in her narration as she uses different accents and changes her tone and pitch with ease. Sofia Leal De La Rosa and Carlotta Brentan are equally talented as Corina's Argentine and Italian friends. A.M. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
07/26/2021
In this bilingual edition (written originally in English and translated into Spanish by Liliana Valenzuela) of Cisneros’s exquisite story (after Puro Amor), a woman relives her time in Paris two decades earlier via a cache of discovered letters. At 20, Corina aspires to become a writer and escape her poor Mexican Chicago family, prompting her to travel to Paris. She meets Marta, from Chile, and Paola, from Italy, and mingles with artists, dancers, and performers. She stretches her money to stay longer, realizing, “I can’t go home yet. Because home is bus stops and drugstore windows, elastic bandages and hairpins, plastic ballpoints, felt bunion pads, tweezers, rat poison, cold sore ointment, mothballs, drain cleaners, deodorant.” Back in Chicago, she holds onto a photo of herself with Marta and Paola, but swiftly loses touch with them. Decades later, she discovers a letter from Marta sent shortly after she’d left, suggesting they meet in Spain, “in case you’re still traveling.” Corina speaks to Marta in her thoughts and gives the rundown of her life: divorced, remarried, two daughters. Cisneros’s language and rhythm of her prose reverberate with Corina’s longing for her youth and unfulfilled promise. The author’s fans will treasure this. Agent: Susan Bergholz, Susan Bergholz Literary. (Sept.)Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly stated this book was translated from the Spanish into English.
From the Publisher
"Every heart-revving scene is sensuously and incisively rendered, cohering into a vivid, tender, funny, bittersweet, and haunting episodic tale of peril, courage, concession, selfhood, and friendship. Cisneros's intricately multidimensional and beautifully enveloping novella is presented in both English and Spanish." —Booklist (starred review)
"Cisneros’s language and rhythm of her prose reverberate with Corina’s longing for her youth and unfulfilled promise. The author’s fans will treasure this." —Publishers Weekly
