La Maravilla

This book is honestly the best one I have encountered in a very, very long time. The manipulation of time, the unexpectedness of virtues in characters so many other authors would have made into cliches, the theme of physics as a unifying science, all make this a book about so much more than "Buckeye". It's about the world, the universe, life and death, ancient ways colliding with progress. If you want to change the way you see the world, read this book.

I haven't read a book that has touched me this much in years. I was awed by the music in Vea's words, breathless trying to understand the layers of meaning found in this book. It's like a beautiful dream, or a kaleidoscope from which you cannot and do not want to look away. You will enjoy this book if you are into Magical Realism, or simply if you like exploring the themes of family, death, and the supernatural. A gem of a book. I wonder if the book was originally writte in Spanish-- I suspect it would be even more beautiful that way.

La Maravilla organizes itself as a complex yet illuminating narration that revolves around experiential themes related to the voyage, the epiphany, and the spectacle, thus making altered forms of consciousness--like the dream, the vision, and the nightmare--a trope for reading the novel. The result will be a narrative amalgam that includes love stories, "visions" (particularly Beto's Yaqui rite of initiation), and folk healers, all displayed through a setting found on the "wasteland" of Phoenix, that is to say, on a city dump awaiting the cleansing fires and the new life-forms that shall rise from their own ashes. The multilayered structure of La Maravilla's narrative is found embryo-like in the title itself through its polycultural meanings, namely: a marvel (maravilla, in Spanish), a flower (the Aztec cempasúchil [marigold], as the flower of the dead), and a dog (a person's guide to Mictlan, the land of the dead according to pre-Columbian mythology). Obviously, in addition to these suggested meanings, there are interconnections made through punning between the poetry of Andrew Marvell, Captain Marvel, and with a collective response to female beauty: Josefina's when she marries Manuel ("a hundred different tongues to mouth their marvel at the beauty of the bride," p. 288). The title itself, as a result, becomes an ideological construct in its own right, composed of polyglot meanings--Aztec, Spanish, English--that revolve around a common metaphysical axis, namely: life and death. The word maravilla, in sum, sends reverberations across several languages, either through the conduit of cognates (e.g, maravilla=marvel), or by way of archetypes linked to cycles of nature that thematize ideas of decay and resurrection. The novel might be read, consequently, as an extended reflection on languages, beginning with the language of the dead (Josephina's commentary in the novel's prologue) passing judgment on the limitations inherent in (mortal) languages ("but human language is as limiting as human eyesight or human thought" [p. 2]). Moreover, one might read La Maravilla as Véa's resolve to uplift understanding through an expansion of situations that are polyglot either through cognates, archetypes, or multilingual translations, creating a long chain of semantic associations that move on the surface of a deep symbolic unconscious where the limits of understanding--easily associated with a Babel-like confusion of tongues--are once and for all resolved. Reason and the unconscious henceforth will be overturned, clearly not through a Freudian paradigm, for in La Maravilla one finds this opposition rewritten through the paradox of the "living dead"--i.e., the living memory of one's ancestors, an ancient metaphor for history and tradition--considered wiser than mortals. When asked by Teresa Márquez (in an unpublished interview) how he approaches the act of writing, Véa answers in the language of nude honesty and

This novel carries with it ghosts and magic, love and forgiveness; it carries the embodiment of the human spirit. It is simply a work that has affected me deeply for several years--something I may pick occassionally to read aloud, to hear the lyric and respect with which this story has been told.The pastiche of characters: Beto and his family, locals and drifters, find humanity within each others' alienation in a desolate yet profound environment.If you have been moved by the history and beauty of Marquez or Allende, and other so-called Magic Realists, if the poetic style of Michael Ondaatje appeals to you, and if you are still haunted by the characters of Steinbeck's "The Wayward Bus" or "Cannery Row"--you must read this book. And if you have read this book, please consider reading a book by Canadian author Sky Lee called "Disappearing Moon Cafe." It is equally as gorgeous.

i began to write this book in 1989 when i was defending a Mexican-American boy against a charge of murder. The judge and the jury in this small San Joaquin valley town were so incredibly racist and abusive toward my client and myself that I took my anger and frustration to my small computer. (The boy was convicted, but his sentence has since been reversed...specifically because of the the judge's abuse of his power.) A story of the true origins of culture; a story about race that began in anger slowly became a love song for culture, for people on the outside. ALFREDO VEA JR.